
Class 



COPYRJGKT DEPOSIT 




PRESIDENT CL.EVKLA;SD RECEIVING 



DIXIE 



OR 



SOUTHERN SCENES AND SKETCHES 



JULIAN RALPH 

AUTHOK OF "on CANADa's FUONTIER " "OUR GREAT WEST" 
"CHICAGO AND THE WOULD's FAIR " ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED 




NKW YORK 
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 

1890 



:<^v 



^-^ 



OF no,v.7fl 



MOV 15 '1835 






By JULIAN RALPH. 



PEOPLE WE PASS. Stones of Life among the 
Masses of New York City. Illustrated. Post Svo, 
Clotli. (Just lieadii.) 

ON CANADA'S FRONTIER, Illustrated. Square 
Svo, Cloth, $2 50. 

OUR GREAT WEST. Illustrated. Square Svo, 
Cloth, $2 50. 

CHICAGO AND THE WORLDS FAIR. Illustrated. 
Svo, Cloth, $3 00. 

Pdui-tbued by HARPER & BROTHERS, New Yoek. 



Copyright, 1895, by Harper & Brothers. 



All n<ihts reserved. 
Priute.l by J. J. Little & Co., New York. 



Orcetino 

To that happy society of women and mm whose innermost souls have been 
bared to me all over the ivorld, whose lodges are hospitable homes, ivhosc 
passioords are terms of buoyant friendship, whose yrips are of the tendrils of 
hindly hearts, and whose aim is to enjoy and to make joyous the fellowship of 
their comrades, this book of Soidliern notes is admiringly dedicated. 



AUTHOR^S NOTE 



The chapters which make up this volume first appeared 
in Harper's Magazine and Harper's Weekly as a series 
of papers upon the development of what may well be called 
"Our New South" and its resources. The descriptions of 
scenery and present conditions are ray own, but the state- 
ments which are of the most value and importance to a 
student of the material resources of the country are such 
as were made to me, and then verified by others — by the 
most shrewd and skilled, and at the same time disinterested, 
residents of the localities to which they apply. It Avould 
have required years of residence and special training for me 
to gather such information from ni}^ own experience. 

Perhaps the chapter upon St. Louis will not seem to be 
as wholly in place here as in the companion to this volume, 
called Our Great West. Truly, St. Louis belongs somewhere 
between the two sections, or more properly in both, for it is 
a Western city with a Southern and Southwestern trade. 
It is treated here because it is impossible to correctly con- 
sider the Southern States without a knowledge of its forces 
and influence, and because these studies, and the main jour- 
ney for making them, were properly begun at that city — 
the gate of the old way to the region bordering upon the 
Mississippi. 

The other chapters are intended to describe the vast and 
prospectively opulent section of our country which has 
undergone a tragic revolution and is already beginning to 
attract the population, ca})ital, and energy by means of 
which it is entering upon a new and exceedingly prosperous 
career. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. THE OLD WAY To DIXIE 1 

II. NEW ORLEANS, OUR SOUTHERN CAPITAL 44 

IIL ALONG THE BAYOU TECHE 91 

IV. IN SUNNY MISSISSIPPI 122 

V. OUR OWN RIVIERA ICU 

VI. THE INDUSTRIAL REGION OF NORTHERN ALABAMA, 

TENNESSEE, AND GEORGIA 206 

VII. CHARLESTON AND THE CAROLINAS 248 

VIIL WHERE TIME HAS SLUMBERED 299 

IX. OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL 337 

X. THE PLANTATION NEGRO 373 

XI. THE NEW GROWTH OF ST. LOUIS 388 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

PRESIDENT CLEVELAND RECEIVING Frontispiece 

ROUSTABOUTS 3 

THE "TEXAS" 5 

ROUSTABOUTS GETTING UNDER WAY 7 

THE SALOON OF A AIISSISSIPPI STEAMBOAT 9 

SALOON ORNAMENTS 12 

THE PILOT 14 

"I'S FIXED FOR LIFE, BOSS, IF DE GOVER'MENT DONE HOLD OUT "' 17 

A MISSISSIPPI STEAMBOAT CAPTAIN 20 

THE MATE OF A MISSISSIPPI BOAT— "NOW, THEN, NIGGER "' . . 23 

DANCE MUSIC ON A STEAMBOAT 25 

THE CHICAGO MAN 28 

THE AWFUL BORE 30 

DECK OF A MISSISSIPPI BOAT — " YOU'RE MARRIED, AIN'T YOU?" 33 

THE MAN FROM PROVIDENCE 34 

PASSING A SISTER-BOAT 36 

ROUSTABOUTS UNLOADING A MISSISSIPPI BOAT 39 

A RAFT OF LOGS 43 

ON CANAL STREET 48 

CREOLE TYPES 51 

IN THE OLD FRENCH QUARTER 53 

AN OLD COURT IN THE FRENCH QUARTER 55 

WINDOW IN OLD FRENCH QUARTER 57 

THE NEW ORLEANS YACHT CLUB 59 

AT THE OLD FRENCH OPERA-HOUSE 61 

READING A DEATH-NOTICE 64 

ALONG THE SHELL ROAD 66 

THE QUEER OLD CHURCH OF ST. ROCHE 68 



PAGR 

THE CLAIBOKNE COTTAGES — A SUMMER RESORT OP NEW ORLEANS 

IN THE PINY WOODS 69 

A BIT OF OLD ARCHITECTURE IN THE FRENCH QUARTER ... 70 

STREET IN THE OLD FRENCH QUARTER, FROM THE HOTEL ROYAL 71 

BAKERS CART 73 

A NEW ORLEANS POLICEMAN 75 

VENDER OF LOTTERY TICKETS 77 

TYPES OF THE DAGO 78 

DAGOS AND THEIR BOATS 79 

THE OLD AND THE NEW SOUTH 81 

A RELIC OF THE " OLD " SOUTH 83 

CORNER OF BANK BUILDING 85 

ALONG THE LEVEE 87 

"TAKE YOUR ROUGHENING AVITH YOU," SAID THE CAPTAIN . . 93 

"SCORES OF NEGRO CABINS" 95 

'CAJUNS 99 

THE MATE OF A TECHE BOAT 103 

FELLOW-PASSENGERS 105 

UP THE BAYOU TECHE 107 

A SUGAR-CANE PLANTATION Ill 

THE CLERK 115 

"AVORKING AS ALL NEGROES DO " 119 

GROTTO AT BILOXI 125 

A SHOO-PLY 128 

JEFFERSON DAVIS'S MANSION, BEAUVOIR, AT BILOXI 133 

bachelors' quarters, BEAUVOIR 136 

IN THE LIBRARY AT BEAUVOIR 139 

A CORNER IN THE LIBRARY, BEAUVOIR 143 

READING-ROOM IN THE LIBRARY, BEAUVOIR 146 

SLEEPING-ROOM IN THE LIBRARY, BEAUVOIR 148 

THE POTTERY OF BILOXI 151 

SENATE-CHAMBER AT JACKSON 153 

governor's mansion AT JACKSON 155 

COTTON AND ITS CAPITOL, JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI 157 

FORT MASSACHUSETTS, SHIP ISLAND, MISSISSIPPI 159 

"SHE PAUSED AND TALKED, WITH MANY COQUETTISH LITTLIi 

GR.\CES" 163 

ON A HOTEL PORCH, TALLAHASSEE 167 

X 



PAGE 

■' WHILE THE PRETTIEST GIRLS WERE ALL IN THE DARKER COR- 
NERS" 171 

ON THE PIAZZA OP THE WINDSOR HOTEL, JACKSONVILLE . . . 175 

LAKE WORTH 179 

DANCE AT THE PONCE DE LEON 183 

IN THE GARDENS FACING THE PONCE DE LEON 187 

A BIT OP THE COURT-YARD OP THE PONCE DE LEON .... 191 

AN OLD BIT OP ST. AUGUSTINE 197 

A STREET IN ST. AUGUSTINE— THE OLD CHURCH IN THE DISTANCE 201 

INN ON LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN 209 

CHATTANOOGA AND MOCCASIN BEND, FROM LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN. 213 
THE TENNESSEE RIVER AT CHATTANOOGA ........ 215 

CHATTANOOGA, PROM THE RIVER 218 

POINT LOOKOUT, LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN 221 

SMELTING -WORKS, CHATTANOOGA 223 

ENTRANCE TO A COAL MINE 225 

IN THE BLUE RIDGE RANGE 227 

MARKET STREET, CHATTANOOGA 229 

COURT-HOUSE, CHATTANOOG.\ 231 

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, CHATTANOOGA 232 

POST-OFFICE, BIRMINGHAM 233 

PEACHTREE STREET, ATLANTA 235 

MARIETTA STREET, ATLANTA 237 

THE CAPITOL, ATL.\NTA 239 

THE GRADY MONUMENT, ATLANTA 241 

THE LAKE, GRANT PARK, ATLANTA 244 

TIIFC ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN AT GRANT PARK, ATLANTA .... 246 

THE IRON PALMETTO-TREE AT COLUMBI.V 250 

AN OLD RESIDENCE, CHARLESTON 253 

OLD IRON GATE, CHARLESTON 255 

CAROLINA HALL, CHARLESTON 257 

CHARLESTON CLUB HOUSE 260 

THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, CHARLESTON 263 

ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH, CHARLESTON 265 

INTERIOR OF ST. MICUAEL's 267 

A BIT OP CHARLESTON, FROM ST. MICHAEL'S CHURCH .... 269 

ST. PHILIP'S CHURCH 270 

liUZZARDS NEAR THE MARKET 271 

xi 



I'AGE 

A NEGHO FUNERAL 273 

PLANTING RICE ON A CAROLINA PLANTATION 275 

THE CAPITOL AT RALEIGH 277 

ENTRANCE TO ASSEMBLY CHAMBER . 278 

A NICIIIt: IN THE CAPITOL 279 

RAILWAY STATION AT RALEIGH 280 

governor's mansion, RALEIGH 281 

A TOBACCO MARKET IN NORTH CAROLINA 283 

STATE PRISON, RALEIGH 284 

STOCKADE AT THE STATE PRISON, RALEIGH 285 

PREPARING TUBEROSE BULBS FOR THE NORTHERN MARKET . . 287 

A WILMINGTOJSr RESIDENCE 288 

A CAROLINA MANSION 289 

FERRY AND NAVAL STORES, WILMINGTON 291 

COURT-HOUSE AND CITY HALL, WILMINGTON 292 

AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL AND DORMITORIES, RALEIGH . . . . 293 

PHOSPHATE MINES NEAR WILMINGTON 295 

NEGRO CEMETERY AT WILMINGTON 297 

INTERIOR OF A MOUNTAIN CABIN 301 

THE OLD TAVERN IN THE VALLEY 305 

THE CIRCUIT-RIDER 309 

A FOOT-BRIDGE, WEST VIRGINIA 313 

MOUNTAIN WOMEN 317 

THE UNITED STATES MAIL IN THE MOUNTAINS 331 

A PRIVATE HUNTER 325 

OLD MOUNTAIN TYPE ' . . . 327 

A NATIVE SPORTSMAN 331 

A mountaineer's CABIN 335 

EASY-GOING NEGROES IN THE MARKET-SPACE 339 

the steps of THE CAPITOL 343 

IN THE ROTUNDA OF THE CAPITOL 347 

IN THE WHISPERING GALLERY OF THE CAPITOL 351 

THE WHITE HOUSE ENTRANCE 353 

IN THE TOP OF THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT 355 

EXCITING SCENE IN THE HOUSE OP REPRESENTATIVES .... 359 

FEMALE LOBBYISTS 363 

PRESS GALLERY IN THE SENATE 367 

"idle time NOT IDLY SPENT" 377 

xii 



DIXIE 



SOUTHERN SCENES AND SKETCHES 



THE OLD WAY TO DIXIE 

It was quite by accident that I heard, while in St. Louis, 
that I could go all the way down the Mississippi to New 
Orleans in one of a fleet of packets that differ in no ma- 
terial way from those whicli figure in a score of aiite 
ht'Uum novels like Uncle Tonics Oabin, and which illumi- 
nate our Northern notions of life in the South when its 
planters basked in the glory of their feudal importance. 

I could see the mighty river during a journey as long 
as that from New York to Liverpool ; could watch the 
old-fashioned methods of the Simon Pure negro rousta- 
bouts at work with the freight ; could gossip and swap 
stories with the same sort of pilots about whom I had 
read so much ; could see many a slumbering Southern 
town unraodernized by railroads ; could float past plan- 
tations, and look out upon old-time planters' mansions ; 
and could actually see hard winter at St. Louis merge 
into soft and beauteous spring at Vicksburg, and become 
summer with a bound at New Orleans. 

More wonderful than all besides, I could cast my lines 
off from the general world of to-day to float back into a 
past era, there to loaf away a week of utter rest, undis- 
turbed by a telegraph or telephone, a hotel elevator or a 
chmging cable-car, surrounded by comfort, fed from a 
good and generous kitchen, and at liberty to forget the 
rush and bustle of that raging monster which the French 
call i\iefn de siede. 

A 1 



" And how many do it ?" I asked. 
" Very few indeed," was the repl}' ; '' not as many on 
the best boat in a season as used to take passage for a 
single trip. The boats are not advertised ; the world 
has forgotten that they are still running.'" 

Tlie only company that maintains these boats is the 
old Anchor Line, and there are no departures for New 
Orleans except on AVodnesdays ; but this was Saturday, 
the sailing day for Natchez, only 272 miles from the end 
of the route, and therefore serving well for so bold an 
experiment. I packed up at the Southern' Hotel, and 
was on board the City of Providence, Captain George 
Carvell, master, an hour before five o'clock, the adver- 
tised sailing hour. The strange, the absolutely charm- 
ing disregard for nineteenth-century bustle was appar- 
ent in the answer to the very Urst question I asked. 
" Does she start sharp at five o'clock ?" 
" No, not sharp ; a little dull, I expect." 
The City of Providence lay with her landing-planks 
hoisted up ahead of her like the claws of a giant lob- 
ster. She was warped to a wharf-boat that was heaped 
with barrels, boxes, and bags, and alive with negroes. 
At a rough guess I should say there were 125 of these 
black laborers, in every variety of rags, like the beggars 
who " come to town " in the old nursery rhyme. Al- 
ready they interested me. Now they would jog along 
rolling barrels aboard with little spiked sticks, next they 
appeared each with a bundle of brooms on his shoulder, 
and in another two minutes the long, zigzagging, sham- 
bling line was metamorphosed into a wriggling sinuosity 
formed of soap-boxes, or an unsteady line of flour-bags, 
each with ragged legs beneath it, or a procession of 
baskets or of bundles of laths. As each one picked up 
an article of freight an overseer told him its destina- 
tion. The negro repeated this, and kept on repeating 




ROUSTABOUTS 



it in a singsong tone as lie shambled along, until one 
of the mates on the boat heard him and told him where 
to put it down, the study of the mate being to distrib- 
ute the cargo evenly, and to see that all packages sent 
to any given landing were kept together. It seemed 
to me that all the foremen and mates were selected for 
their conscientious intention to keep their hands in their 
trousers pockets under all circumstances, for their harsh 
and grating voices, and for their ability to say a great 
deal and not have a word of it understood by your hum- 
ble servant, the writer. 

The roustabouts looked all of one hue, from their 
shoes to the tops of their heads. Their coffee-colored 
necks and faces matched their reddish-brown clothes, 
that had been grimed with the dust of everything 

3 



known to man- — which dust also covered their shoes 
and bare feet, and made both appear the same. When 
a huddle went off the boat empty-handed they looked 
like so many big rats. They loaded the Providence's 
lower deck inside and out ; they loaded her upper deck 
where the chairs for the passengers had seemed to be 
supreme ; and then they loaded the roof over that deck 
and the side spaces until her sides were sunk low down 
near the river's surface, and she bristled at every jioint 
with boxes, bales, agricultural implements, brooms, car- 
riages, bags, and, as the captain remarked, " Heaven only 
knows what she 'am't got aboard her." The mates 
roared, the negroes talked all the time, or sung to rest 
their mouths, the boat kept settling in the water, and the 
mountains of freight swelled at every point. It was well 
said that twenty ordinary freight trains on a railroad would 
not carry as much freight as was stowed aboard of her, and 
I did not doubt the man who remarked to me that when 
such a boat, so laden, discharged her cargo loosely at 
one place, it often made a pile bigger than the boat itself. 
The Citij of Providence was one of a long line of Mis- 
sissippi boats edging the broad, clean, sloping levee that 
fronts busy St. Louis. She was by far the largest and 
handsomest of the packets ; but all are of one tjqDe, and 
that is worth describing. They are, so far as I remem- 
ber, all painted white, and are very broad and low. 
Each carries tw^o tall black funnels, capped \vith a bulg- 
ing ornamental top, and carrying on rods swung between 
the funnels the trade-mark of the com])any cut out of 
sheet-iron — an anchor or an initial letter, a fox or a swan, 
or whatever. There are three or four stories to these 
boats : first the open main-deck for freight and for the 
boilers and engines ; then the walled-in saloon-deck, 
"with a row of windows and doors cut alternately close 
beside one another, and with profuse ornamentation by 

4 



means of jig-saw work wherever it can be put ; and, 
last of all, the " Texas," or officers' quarters, and the 
" bureau," or negro passengers' cabin, forming the third 
story. Most of the large boats have the big square 
pilot-house on top of the " Texas," but others carry it 
as part of the third story in front of the " Texas." The 
pilot-house is alwaj's made to look graceful by means 
of an upper fringe of jig-saw ornament, and usually 
carries a deer's head or pair of antlers in front of it. 
We would call it enormous ; a great square room Avith 
space in it for a stove, chairs, the wheel, the pilots, and, 
in more than one boat that I saw, a sofa or cushion laid 




THE "TEXAS' 



over the roof of the gangway from below. The sides 
and back of the house are made principally of sliding 
window-sashes. The front of the house, through which 
the pilots see their course, is closable by means of a door 
hinged into sections, and capable of being partially or 
fully opened, as the state of the weather permits. The 
wheel of one of these great packets is very large, and 
yet light. It is made as if an ordinary Eastern or North- 
ern wheel had been put in place and then its spokes had 
grown two feet beyond its rim, and had had another 
rim and handles added. There are man}^ sharp bends 
in the river, and I afterwards often saw the pilots using 
both hands and one foot to spin the big circle, until the 
rudder was "hard over" on whichever side they want- 
ed it. 

These Mississippi packets of the first and second class 
are very large boats, and roominess is the most striking 
characteristic of every part of them. They look light, 
frail, and inflammable, and so they are. The upright 
})osts that rise from the deck of such a boat to su])port 
the saloon-deck are mere little sticks, and everything 
above them, except the funnels, is equally slender and 
thin. These boats are not like ours at any point of their 
make-up. They would seem to a man from the coast 
not to be the handiwork of ship-builders ; indeed, there 
has been no apparent effort to imitate the massive beams, 
the peculiar " knees," the freely distributed " bright- 
work" of polished brass, the neat, solid joiner-work, oi" 
the thousand and one tricks of construction and orna- 
ment which distinguish the work of our coast boat- 
builders. These river boats — and I include all the 
packets that come upon the Mississippi from its tribu- 
taries — are more like tlie work of carpenters and house- 
builders. It is as if their model had been slowly devel- 
oped from that of a barge to that of a house-boat, or 

6 




IIOUSTABOUTS GETTING UNDER WAY 



barge with a roof over it ; then as if a house for passen- 
gers had been built on top of the first roof, and the 
" Texas " and " bureau " had followed on the second 
roof. Pictures of the packets scarcely show how un- 
like our boats these are, the difference being in the 
methods of workmanship. Each story is built merely 
of sheathing, and in the best boats the doors and fan- 
lights are hung on without frames around them — all 
loose and thin, as if they never encountered cold weather 
or bad storms. All the boats that I saw are as nearly 
alike in all respects as if one man had built them. I 
was told that the great packets cost only $70,000 to 
$100,000, so that the mere engine in a first-class At- 
lantic coast river or sound boat is seen to be of more 

7 



value than one of these huge packets, and a prime reason 
for the difference in construction suggests itself. But 
these great, comfortable vessels serve their purpose where 
ours could not be used at all, and are altogether so use- 
ful and appropriate, as well as picturesque and attract- 
ive to an Eastern man, that there is not room in my 
mind for aught than praise of them. 

It was after six o'clock when the longshore hands 
were drawn up in line on the wharf-boat and our own 
crew of forty roustabouts came aboard. To one of these 
I went and asked how many men \vere in the long 
brown line on shore. 

" Dam if I know, boss," said the semi-barbarian, with 
all the politeness he knew, wliich was none at all, of 
word or manner. It occurred to me afterwards that 
since everybody swears at these roustabouts, an occa- 
sional oath in return is scarcely the interest on the pro- 
fanity each one lays up every year. 

In a few moments the great island of joiner-work and 
freight crawled away from the levee and out upon the 
yellow, rain-pelted river, with long-drawn gasps, as if 
she were a monster that had been asleep and was slowly 
and regretfully waking up. IIow often every one who 
has read either the records or the romances of our South 
and West has heard of the noise that a packet sends 
through the woods and over the swamps to strike terror 
to the soul of a runaway darky who has never heard 
the sound, or to apprise waiting passengers afar off that 
their boat is on its way ! It is nothing like the puff ! 
])uff' ! of the ordinary steam motor ; it is a deep, hol- 
low, long-drawm, regular breathing — lazy to the last 
degree, like the grunt of a sleeping pig that is dream- 
ing. It is made by two engines alternately, and as it 
travels up the long pipes and is shot out upon the air 
it seems not to come from tlie chest of a demon, but 

8 







lA 







\^ I 




:^^S^t{ 






— f^-safiS^ ""^^^^jAttJBi. . 



from the very heels of some cold-blooded, half-torpid, 
]irehistoric loafer of the alligator kind. To the river 
])assenger in his bed courting sleep it is a sound more 
soothing than the patter of rain on a farm-house roof. 

I had been in my state-room, and found it the largest 
one that I had ever seen on a steamboat. It had a 
double bed in it, and there was room for another. There 
was a chaii' and a marble-tojiped wash-stand, a carpet, 
and there were curtains on the glazed door and the long 
window that formed the top of the outer wall. The 
supper -bell rang, and I stepped into the saloon, which 
was a great chamber, all cream-white, touched with gold. 
The white ribs of the white ceiling were close together 
over the whole saloon's length of 250 feet, and each rib 
was upheld by most ornate supports, also white, luit 
hung with gilded pendants. Colored fanlights let in 
the light by day, and under them other fanlights served 
to share the brilliant illumination in the saloon with the 
state- rooms on either side. At the forward end of the 
saloon were tables spread and set for the male passen- 
gers. At the other end sat the captain and the married 
ladies and girls, and such men as came with them. The 
chairs were all white, like the walls, the table-cloths, and 
the a])rons of the negro servants, who stood like bronze 
statues awaiting the orders of the passengers. The sup- 
per ])roved to be well cooked and nicely served. As the 
fare to New (Jrleans was about the same as the price of 
a steerage ticket to Europe, it was pleasant to know that 
the meals, which were included in the bargain, were go- 
ing to be as admirable as everything else. 

After supper I was asked to go up into the pilot-house, 
then in charge of Louis Moan and James Parker, both 
veterans on the river, both good story-tellers, and as 
kindly and pleasant a pair as ever lightened a journe}^ 
tit a \yheel or in a cabin. That night, when a dark pall 

10 



liung all around the boat, with only here and there a 
yellow glimmer showing the presence of a house or gov- 
ernment ligiit ashore, these were spectral men at a shad- 
owy wheel. In time it was possible to see that the house 
was half as big as a railroad car, that Captain Carvell 
was in a chair smoking a pipe, that the gray sheet far 
below was the river, and that there was an indefina- 
ble something near by on one side which the pilots had 
agreed to regard as the left-hand shore. They said 
'"right" and ''left," and spoke of the smoke-stacks as 
"cliimneys." But over and through and around the 
scene came the periodic gasp — shoo-whoo — from the 
great smoke-stacks, as gusts of wind on a bleak shore 
would sound if they blew at regular intervals. 

Back in the blaze of light in the cabin I saw that the 
women had left their tables, and were gathered around 
a stove at their end of the room, precisely as the nien 
had done at theirs. The groups were 150 feet apart, 
and showed no more interest in one another than if 
they had been on separate boats. I observed that at 
the right hand of the circle df smoking men was the 
neatly kept bar in a sort of alcove bridged across by a 
counter. Matching it, on the other side of the boat, Avas 
the office of Mr. (). W. Moore, the clerk. To Mr. IMoore 
I offered to pay my fare, but he said there was no hur- 
ry, he guessed my money would kee}). To the bar- 
tender I said that if he had made the effervescent 
draught which I drank before supper I desired to com- 
pliment him. " Thank you, sir," said he ; " you are very 
kind." How pleasant was the discovery that I made 
on my first visit to the South, that in that part of our 
Union no matter how humble a white man is he is in- 
stinctively polite ! Not that I call a bartender on a Mis- 
sissippi boat a humble personage ; he merely recalled 
the general fact to my mind. 

11 




SALOON ORNAMENT 



The boat stopped at a land- 
ing, and it was as if it had died. 
There was no sound of running 
about or of yelling ; there was 
simply deathlike stillness. There 
was a desk and a student-lamp 
in the great cabin, and, alas for 
the unities ! on the desk lay a 
pad of telegraph blanks — " the 
mark of the beast !'' But they 
evidently were only a bit of ac- 
cidental drift from wide-awake 
St. Louis, and not intended for 
the passengers, because the clerk came out of his office, 
swept them into a drawer, and invited me to join him 
in a game of tiddledywinks. He added to the calm 
pleasures of the game by telling of a Kentucky girl 
eleven feet high, who stood at one end of a very 
wide table and shot the disks into the cup from both 
sides of the table without changing her position. I 
judged from his remarks that she was simply a tall 
girl who played Avell at tiddledywinks. No man likes 
to be beaten at his own 
game, the tools for which 
he carries about with him. 
Even princes of the blood 
royal show annoy ance when 
it happens. 

I slept like a child all 
night, and mentioned the 
fact at the breakfast table, 
where the men all spoke to 
one another and the clerk 
addressed each of us by 
name as if we were in a 




SALOON ORNAMENT 



boarding-house. Every one smiled when 1 said that the 
boat's noise did not disturb me. 

" Why, we tied up to a tree all nioht," said the clerk, 
''and did not move a vard until an hour ag-o." 

At this breakfast we had a very African-looking dish 
that somehow suggested the voudoo. It appeared like 
a dish of exaggerated canary seed boiled in tan-bark. 

" Dat dere," said my waiter, " is sumping you doan' 
git in no hotels. It's jambullade. Bev done make it 
ob rice, tomatoes, and brekfus' bacon or ham; but ef 
dey put in oysters place ob de ham, it's de fines' in de 
Ian'." 

I had not been long enough in the atmosphere of 
Mississippi travel to avoid worrying about the loss of a 
whole night while we were tied up to the shore. There 
had been a fog, I was told, and to proceed would have 
been dangerous. Yet I was bound for Ts^ew Orleans for 
Mardi-gras, and had only time to make it, according to 
the boat's schedule. But I had not fathomed a tithe of 
the mysteries of this river travel. 

" It's too bad we're so late," I said to Mr. Todd, the 
steward. 

" We ain't late," said he. 

" I thought we laid up overnight," I said. 

" So we did," said he. " But that ain't goin' to make 
any difference ; we don't run so close to time as all 
that." 

" Don't get excited," said Captain Carvell ; "you are 
going to have the best trip you ever made in your 
life. And if we keep a-layin' up nights, all you've got 
to do is to step ashore at Cairo or Memphis or Natchez 
and take the cars into New Orleans quicker'n a wink. 
You can stay with us till the last minute before you've 
got to be in New Orleans, and then the cars '11 take you 
there all right. I only wish it was Ai)ril 'stead of Feb- 

13 




TUE PILOT 



ruary. Then you leave a right cold cHmate in the 
North, and you get along and see flowers all a-bloom- 
ing and roses a- blushing. Why, sir, I've been making 
this run thirty-nine years, and I enjoy it yet." 

" Come up in the pilot-house," said Mr. Moan. " Bring 
your pipe and tobacco and your slippers, and leave 'em 
up there, so's to make yourself at home. You're going 
to live with us nigh on to a week, you know, and you 
ought to be friendly." 

It was by this tone, caught from each officer to whom 
I spoke, that I, all too slowly, imbibed the calm and 
restful spirit of the voyage. Nothing made any differ- 
ence, or gave cause to borrow trouble — not even hitch- 
ing up to the river-bank now and then for a night or 
two. 

We had been at Chester for nearly an hour. The 
clerk went ashore, visiting, and disappeared up the main 
street. We were to take on 500 barrels of flour, and for 
a long while these had been jolting and creaking and 
spurting out little white wisps of powder as the black 
crew rolled them aboard. The pilot remarked, as he 
looked down at the scene, that when we came to leave 
we would not really get away, because we must drop 
down to a mill half a mile down stream, and then to a 
warehouse farther along, and then, " if there are any 
other stops near by, some one will run down with a 
flag, or a white handkerchief, and call us." 

I alone was impatient — the only curse on the happy 
condition. In the middle of a lifetime of catching trains 
and riding watch in hand I found that I did not know 
how to behave or how to school myself for a natural, 
restful situation such as this. I felt that I belonged in 
the world, and that this was not it. This was dn^am- 
land — an Occidental Arabia. True, we were moved by 
steam, we lifted the landing-stages by steam, and swung 

15 



red farm wagons to the hurricane-deck and blew whis- 
tles, all by steam ; but it was steam hypnotized and put 
to sleep. Could I not hear it snore through the smoke- 
stacks whenever the engineer disturbed it ( As we 
swung away from Chester, Mr. Moan pointed across 
the river and said : 

" That's Claraville over there. It's a tidy place. Been 
that way since I was a boy. It don't grow, but it holds 
its own." 

I harbored the hope that I would appreciate that re- 
mark, and the spirit which engendered it, in five days 
or so of life on the lazy boat. Even then I could see 
that it was something to "hold one's own." It was 
an effort, and perhaps a strain. It is more tlian 
we men and women are able to do for any length of 
time. 

We pushed high up a stony bank at a new place. 
Again the clerk went ashore, and this time the captain 
followed him. Another wabbling stream of flour-barrels 
issued from a warehouse and rolled into the boat. I 
think I beo;an to feel less forced resig-nation and more 
at ease. I was drifting into harmony with my surround- 
ings. It Avas still a little strange that the voices on 
shore were all using English words. Spanish or Arabic 
would have consorted better with the liour. As a happy 
makeshift a negro came out and sat on a barrel and 
played a jews-harp. He Avas ragged and slovenly, and 
was the onl}' black man not at work ; Ijut perhaps a 
man cannot work steadily and do justice to a jews-harp 
at the same time. He turned his genius upon a lively 
tune, and the serpentlike stream of barrels began to flow 
faster under the negroes' hands, as if it were a current 
of molasses and the music had warmed it. The church 
bells — for it Avas Sunday — broke upon the air at a dis- 
tance; at just the right distance, so that they sounded 

16 



soft and religious. The 
sun was out. Only one 
other thing was needed- 
tobacco. 

When I went to get my 
pipe, the yonngest of the 
ladies in the saloon was at 
the piano, and " A Starry 
iS^ight for a Ramble " was 
tricklino' from her fingers' 
ends. I dropped into a 
chair to listen, and to 
think how prone the 
Southern folk are to in- 
sist upon a recognition of 
caste in every relation of 
life. First, the captain at 
the head of all, then the 
ladies and their male es- 
corts — these were the ar- 
istocrats of the boat. The 
lonely male passengers 
were the middle class, 
graciously permitted to 
sleep on the saloon-deck. 
Finally, the negro passen- 
gers and the petty officers 

were sent up above, to quarters far from the rest. But 
the young lady saw me sitting there, and the music 
stopped. She left the piano stool with a flirt of her 
skirt ; not a violent motion of the whole back of her 
dress, as if she Avas really " put out " by my intrusion, 
but just a faint little snap at the very tail of the elo- 
((uent garment. How many languages women have ! 
They have one of the tongue, like ours; one of the 
B 17 




I S FIXED FOR LIFE, BOSS, IF DE 

gover'ment done hold out " 



silent, mobile lips, as when school-girls talk without be- 
ing heard ; one of the eyes ; one of their spirits, that rise 
into vivacity for those they love or seek to please, and 
that sink into moodiness or languor near those they 
don't care for ; and finally, this of the skirts. 

But that was only a faint whip of the very tail of the 
skirt, down by the hem. It hinted to me that we were 
to become acquainted soon. There was plenty of time; 
I would not hurry it. 

I went to my great comfortable room and experi- 
mented with the locked door Avhich was opposite the 
entrance. It opened, and let out upon the outer deck, 
past all the other state - room doors. That was ex- 
quisite. It was like part of a typical Southern home, 
Avith the parlor opening out on a veranda over a river. 
I was reminded of the first true Southern house I ever 
stopped at, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. There were 
two long arms in front of the main building, and the 
rooms in these arms had a door and a window at each 
end. I was enraptured with ray good fortune until 
nio'ht came, when I discovered that neither window 
sported a catch and neither door had a lock. I might as 
well, I might better, have been put to bed in the fields. 
All the stories of murder I had heard during the day 
— and they were plenty — came back, and sat on the 
edge of the bed with me. I complained in the morn- 
ing, and the proprietor laughed, and said there was 
not a lock on a door in the county. They mur- 
dered there, but they did not rol). That was a con- 
solation. 

The Mississippi proved not so unlike a Northern river 
as might have been expected. The Hudson is as wide 
in some places, and I have seen parts of Lake Ontario 
with just such shores. Fields of grain ran to the edge 
of the bluff, and here and there were houses and patclies 

18 



■of trees. The Illinois side was a louo- reach of wooded 
bluff. The water itself was mud. Senator Ingalls is 
quoted as saying that it was " too thick for a beverage 
and too thin for food." Everywhere the yellow water, 
running the same w^ay as the boat, seemed to outstrip our 
vessel. Everywhere it was dotted with logs, twigs, and 
little floating islands of the wreckage of the cottonwood 
thickets of Dakota and Montana, perhaps of the forests 
at the feet of the Rocky Mountains. That was the main 
peculiarity of the I'iver — the presence of thousands of 
tons of debris floating behind, beside, and ahead of the 
steamboat. Here and there we saw a " government 
light," a little lantern on a clean white frame-work, sug- 
gesting an immaculate chicken-coop. Men who live in 
nearby houses get ten or fifteen dollars a month — the 
lights being of two grades — for lighting them every 
night and putting them out every morning. Mr. Moan 
told of a negro down below where we were who gets 
fifteen dollars a month for keeping a difficult light, and 
who, on being asked how he w^as getting along, replied 
that it was money enough for the keep of his wife and 
himself. " Vs fixed for life, boss," he said, " if de gov- 
er'ment done hold out." 

I noted with keen pleasure that neither Pilot Moan 
nor Pilot Parker blew the wliistle as the boat was 
backed ofi" the mud at a landing. In Xew York they 
would surely whistle and shriek " good-bye." In France 
tliey would blow all the time. The Mississippi plan is 
better. There they whistle only when approaching a 
landing, " to notify the labor." 

For miles and miles Ave floated out in the channel and 
were alone in the Avorld — we and the distant blue hills, 
the thin bare forests, and the softly s})eeding stream. 
JN^ot a house or a fence or a ploughed acre was in siglit. 
What a country ours is ! How much room it ofl'ers to 

19 



future peoples ! They are not hurrying — they who have- 
so much more at stake than we on that boat. Why, then, 
needed we to hurry ? When a house or a village hove in 
sight, it was not always wooden, as in the West. Often 
the warehouses, the mills, and even the manor -houses 
were of stone or brick. Some of these places were inac- 




A MISSISSIPPI STKAMBOAT CAPTAIN 

20 



■cessible to so big a boat as the Providence, but from its 
decks could be seen little wao'g'le-tailed stern-wheelers 
puffing and splashing up to them for freight. 

At one stop which we did make, Captain Carvell or- 
dered a barge pushed out of the way — " so's we sha'n't 
make a bunglesome landing," he said. The nearest great 
landing-stage, a long gang-plank hung by the middle 
from a sort of derrick, and capable of connecting the 
boat with a hill or a flat surface, was let down on the 
bank. The unavoidable flour- barrels came head fore- 
most along a wooden slide this time, and a darky on the 
boat sang an incessant line, " Somebody told me so," as 
a warning to the men below that another and another 
barrel was coming. They are fond of chanting at their 
work, and they give vent to whatever comes into their 
heads, and then repeat it thousands of times, perhaps. 
It is not always a pretty sentence, but every such refrain 
serves to time their movements. " O Lord God ! you 
know you done wrong," I have heard a negro say with 
each bag that was handed to him to lift upon a pile. 
" Been a slave all yo' days ; you 'ain't got a penny 
saved," was another refrain ; and still another, chanted 
incessantly, was: "Who's been here since I's been gone'i^ 
Big buck nigger with a derby on." They are all " nig- 
gers " once you enter the Southern country. Every one 
calls them so, and they do not often vary the custom 
among themselves. 

These roustabouts are nothing like as forward as the 
lowest of their race that we see in the North. Presum- 
ably they are about what the " field hands " of slavery 
times were. They are dull-eyed, shambling men, dressed 
like perambulating rag-bags, with rags at the sleeves, up 
and down the trousers, at the hems of their coats, and 
the rims of their caps and hats. A man who makes six 
changes of his working attire every year by contract 

21 



Avith a tailor would be surprised at how long these men 
keep their clothes. Some wear coats and vests and no 
shirts ; some wear overcoats and shirts and no vests ; 
some have only shirts and trousers — shirts that have 
lost their buttons, perhaps, and Hare wide open to the 
trousers band, showing a black trunk like oiled ebony. 
They earn a dollar a day, but have not learned to save 
it. They are very dissipated, and are given to carrying 
knives, which the mates take away from the most un- 
ruly ones. The scars on many of their bodies show to 
what use these knives are too often put. " Who's dat 
talkin' 'bout cuttin' out some one's heart ?" I heard one 
say as he slouched along in the roustabout line. " Ef 
dar's goin' to be any cuttin', I Avant to do some." 
Though they chant at their work, I seldom saw them 
laugh or heard them sing a song, or knew one of them 
to dance during the voyage. The work is hard, and they 
are kept at it, urged constantly by the mates on shore 
and aboard, as the Southern folks say that negroes and 
mules always need to be. But the roustabouts' faults 
are excessively human, after all, and the consequence 
of a sturdy belief that they need sharper treatment than 
the rest of us leads to their being urged to do more 
work than a white man. There were nights on the 
Providence when the landings ran close together, and 
the poor wretches got little or no sleep. They " tote " 
all the freight aboard and back to land again on their 
heads or shoulders, and it is crushing w^ork. Whenever 
the old barbaric instinct to loaf, or to move by threes at 
one man's work, would prompt them, one of the mates 
was sure to spy the weakness and roar at the culprits. 

The mates showed no actual unkindness or severity 
while I was on that boat. But they all — on all the 
boats — have fearsome voices, such as we credit to pi- 
rate chiefs on " low, rakish, black boats" in yellow-clad 




THE MATE OF A MISSISSIPPI BOAT — "NOW, THEN, NIGGER " 



novels. Any one of them would break up an opera 
troupe. They rasp at the darkies in their business 
voices, with a " Run up the plank, nigger ; now, then, 
nigger, get wood " — and then they turn and speak to the 
passengers in their Sunday shore-leave voices, as gently 
as any men can talk. 

Mr, Halloran, an up-river pilot of celebrity who was 
studying the lower river, told me that he remembered 
when it was the custom for the mates to hit the lazy 
negroes on the head with a billet of wood, " and knock 

23 



them stiff.'" The other negroes used to laugh (presum- 
ably as the sad-faced man laughed when the photogra- 
pher clapped a pistol to his head and said, " Smile, — 
you, or I'll shoot you "). AVhen the felled negro came 
to, the others would say, " Lep up quick an' git to work, 
nigger ; de mate's a-coming." They do not urge the help 
Avith cord-wood now — so the mate of the Providence told 
me — because the negroes get out warrants and delay the 
boat. 

I have said that tiie ])lacks all call themselves " nig- 
gers." The rule has its exceptions. I went ashore at 
a plantation called " Sunny side," and saw a cheery old 
" aunty " standing near a cabin doorway from out of 
which pickaninnies were tumbling like ants out of an 
ant-hill. 

'' How many children have you got, aunty ?" I in- 
quired. 

" I 'ain't got none yere," she said ; " mine's all out in 
de fiel'. Dese yer two is my gran'chillen ; de oders I'm 
takin' car' of fer de ladies ob de neighborhood." 

There was a fine barber shop and " wash-room " on 
the packet, and the barber and I often conversed, Avith 
a razor between us. lie asked me once how I liked my 
hair trimmed, and I said I always left that to the bar- 
ber. 

" Dat's c'rect," said he ; '' you kin leave it to me safe- 
ly ; and you kin bet I'm more dan apt to do it in de 
mos' fashionablest manner." Then he turned and called 
to his assistant, a coal-black boy who was working his 
w^ay to IS^ew Orleans. " Hey, dere ! you nigger ! Git 
me a high stool outen de pantry. How you 'spect I's 
gwine cut de gemmen's ha'r ef I doan' hab no stool ?" 

I mentioned the fact that the roustabouts were work- 
ing very hard. 

" Dat dey is," said the barber. "We call 'em 'roost- 

24 



ers' on de ribber, but rous'about is more correc'. Dey 
wuk hard night an' day, an' dey git mo' kicks dan dol- 
lars. Ef I got rejuced so's I had to do manual laboi', I'd 
go to stealin' 'fo' I'd be a rooster. Certain su' I would, 
'cause dey couldn't 
wuk a man no harder 
in de penitentshuary 
ef he got caught dan 
de}' do on dese boats." 
At supper on the 
second night I began 
to find fault with the 
custom of separating 
the ladies and the gen- 
tlemen by the length 
of an enormous sa- 
loon. The gulf be- 
tween the men and 
women was yet as 
wide as ever. There 
they sat at their sepa- 
rate table. Later they 

would make a ring around a stove of their own, or 
retire to an especial saloon called " the nursery," Avliich 
spans and shuts off the whole back end of the boat — 
the most attractive part of our Northern steamboats. 
There were four women and a little baby girl on this 
boat. The tiny woman, though only four years old, had 
been to visit me during the afternoon, and had told me 
her own peculiar version of Cinderella. Poor little tot I 
She was with a man and woman whom she called ])a])a 
and mamma, but they made tiie cruel mistake of telling 
everybody that she was a little orphan waif, the child 
of a pauper, and that they had adopted her — the last 
thing, one would think, that they Avould noise abroad. 




DANCE MUSIC ON A STEAMBOAT 



I wondered whether her name might not be Cinderelhi, 
and that led me to think that I did not know even the 
name of the yonngest of the grown women, who, by- 
the-way, was only eighteen or nineteen, with jet hair, 
coal-black laughing eyes, and a smiling month set with 
pearls. She was perfectly formed, and being beautiful, 
was also amiable, for there can be no true beauty in 
a woman who is not sunny -hearted. It was she who 
played the piano for the women — until a man listened. 
Perhaps another time I may be able to enjoy such a 
restful break in my life to the uttermost, and not draw 
comparisons or seek faults to find ; yet on this second 
night I was unable to help recalling the only other trip 
I had then made on a Southern river. It was on the 
Ohio. Half the passengers were Iventuckians. As soon 
as the boat started, a negro roustabout was hired to fid- 
dle in the saloon, and every man sought a partner and 
fell to waltzing. It was idyllic ; it was a snatcli of 
Arcadian life, of Brittany or Switzerland imported to 
America. A young Kentuckian, w4io introduced him- 
self to me and then to all the women, kindly intro- 
duced them all to one another and then to me. That 
was better than this Mississippi plan of putting a whole 
boat's length between the sexes. This suggested a float- 
ing synagogue. 

We stopped at Cairo on the second morning out, and 
were pulling away from there while I ate my breakfast. 
I told Captain Carvell that I was sorry to have missed 
seeing that important town, but I found that, as before, 
my regrets were groundless. Nothing is missed and 
nothing makes any difference on that phenomenal line. 
" You Avon't miss Cairo," said the captain ; " we are go- 
ing up a mile to get some pork, and down half a mile to 
get some flour. We shall be here some hours yet." I 
ate a leisurely breakfast, saw the town to my heart's 



content, and was back on the boat an hour before it got 
away for good. A railroad train whizzed along above 
the levee like a messenger from the world of worry and 
unrest, and I looked at it as I Imve often looked at a 
leopard caged in a menagerie. It could not get at me, 
I knew. 

The beautiful black-eyed girl had kept in the ladies' 
end of the saloon, wrapped up in Cinderella, the Chicago 
man's tiny daughter-, but on this day, as I was on the 
■upper deck, I could not help seeing her mount the lad- 
derlike stairs to the pilot-house. It is amazing that four 
women and half a dozen men should have been together 
so long and not become acquainted. To be sure, I could 
have followed the pretty brunette to the pilot-house and 
been introduced by one of the pilots; but there was no 
hurry. Besides, at the time, a young commercial trav- 
eller from Providence was telling me of his uncertainty 
Avhether or not he was in love. The subject of his 
doubts was a young lady whose portrait he carried in 
a locket which he kept opening incessantly. 

I spent much time every day in the pilot-house. I 
heard very much about the skill and knowledge the 
river-pilot's calling required, but I saw even more than 
I heard. This giant river does not impress those who 
study it with its greatness so much as with its eccen- 
tricities. It runs between banks that are called earth, 
but act like brown sugar ; that cave in and hollow out, 
and turn into bars and islands, in a way that is almost 
indescribable. Islands in it which were on one side one 
year are on the other side another year. Channels 
which the steamboats followed last month and for years 
past are now closed. Bars no one ever saw before sud- 
denly lift above the surface. Piloting on the Mississippi 
is a business no one ever learns. It is a continual sub- 
ject of study. It is the work of years to understand the 

27 



general course of the chan- 
nel, and then the knowledge 
must be altered with each 
trip. The best pilot on the 
river, if he stops ashore a 
few months, becomes green- 
er than a new hand. The 
pilots not only report their 
new experiences for publica- 
tion in the newspapers, but* 
they make notes of remark- 
able changes, and drop them 
into boxes on the route for 
the guidance of others in the 
business. 

In the lower part of the 
river, below Tennessee, the 
whistle of a boat may often 
be heard between twelve 
and fifteen hours before the 
boat reaches the point where 
the sound came. This is be- 
cause of the manner in which 
the river doubles upon it- 
self. A town which may be 
only four or five miles across one of these loops will hear 
the boat, but the distance around the bend, and the stops 
the boat makes, may allow a prospective passenger to do 
a day's business before he boards the vessel. 

Nothing could be more primitive than many of the 
boat - landings. The vessels simply "run their nozzles 
agin the shore," as John Hay has sung that they do. 
Villages, planters' depots or mills, are found on the edge 
of a rude bank, and the boats run up close as they can 
and lower the stages. The darkies tumble up and down 

28 




TFIE CHICAGO MAN 



the bluff, the spectators hne its edge. There is no stair- 
case, pier, or wharf-boat, sea-wall, or anything. If there 
was, it is a question whether it would last out a single 
season. I seldom looked long at such a bank that I did 
not see a piece of it loosen and crumble and fall into 
the rushing, yellow river. Sometimes it was only a ton 
that fell in ; sometimes it was a good fraction of an 
acre. Captain Carvell told me that once he was looking 
at as noble and large a tree as he ever saw in his life, 
standing inshore and away from the edge of a bluff. 
Suddenly the land slipped away from around it, and it 
fell and crashed into his steamboat. At many and many 
a stopping-place the pilots call to mind where the banks 
were when they began piloting, and always they were 
far out in the present stream. One pointed out to me 
an eddy over the wreck of a steamer that sunk while 
warped to the shore. She was now in the middle of 
the exti-aordinary river. Any one may see Island Num- 
ber Ten, and call to mind its exciting part in the late 
war; but it had no part in it, for old Island Number 
Ten disappear* d years ago, and this is a new one, not 
on the site ot' its predecessor. Yet the true Island 
Number Ten bore very ancient, heavy timber, and many 
fine plantations. The new one is already timbered with 
a dense growth of cane and saplings. 

iVt Fort Pillow v»e saw the river's most stupendous 
ravages of that particular time. The famous bluff, fifty 
feet high at least, was sliding down in great slices and 
bites and falling into the river. One great mound was 
in the water, another had fallen just behind it, and these 
had carried the trees that were growing in the earth 
flat down in the mixed-up dirt. But beyond tliese a 
huge slice many rods long and many yards thick was 
parting from the bluff and leaning over towards the 
"water, with huge trees still standing on it, and reaching 

29 



their naked roots out on either side like the lingers of 
drowning men. Below, at what is called Centennial 
Cut-off, the eccentric river has reversed its original di- 
rection. It used to form a letter S, and now it flows 
down the central curve of the S Avhere it used to flow 
nortliward. The two loops are grown with reeds and 
form a vast amphitheatre, at the sides of which, five 
miles off, one sees the distant banks covered with big 
timber. 

Still farther down the river, in places where the men 
of the River Commission liad been at work, sve saw the 
banks cut at an angle like a natural beach, and sheathed 
with riprap. In places the water is said to have got 
under the slieatliing and melted tlie work away, but 
there was no disposition among the navigators I was 
Avith to criticise the government work, so great has been 
the continually increasing imjirovement of the water- 
way. We saw few of those snags which were once as 
common as the dollars of a millionaire, but we did see 
many places where the crews of the snag-boats had been 
at work. The men chop down the trees so that when 
the bank caves the trees and their roots will both float 
off separately. If left to pursue the wicked ways of 
inanimate things, the trees would be carried out into 
the stream to sink butt downward, and project their 
trunks up to pierce the bottom of the first boat that 
struck one. The government boats have done splendid 
work at pulling up snags. It is said that their tackle 
is strong enougli for any snag they ever And, and that 
" they could pull up the bottom of the river, if neces- 
sary." 

Down on the Mississippi State and Arkansas shores 
we began to note the consequences of former high stages 
of water. The water-marks were often half-way up the 
cabin and wareliouse dooi's, and tales were told of faini- 

81 



lies that take to the second stories of tlieir houses on 
such occasions, not forgetting to put their poultry and 
cattle on rafts tied to trees, to keep them until the flood 
subsides. 

It was on the third da}" that I became acquainted with 
the beautiful nunlike pianist. I found her in distress 
among the firkins and brooms and boxes on the upper 
deck, among which the boat's cat had fled from the too 
violent endearments of little Cinderella. My hands and 
those of the pianist met in the dark crannies of the 
freight piles, and we fell to laughing, and became so 
well acquainted that soon afterwards she dropped into 
a chair beside me. In fifteen minutes she had told me 
her name, age, station, amusements, love affairs, home 
arrangements, tastes, hopes, and religious belief. The 
manner of the narrative was even more peculiar than 
the matter. Her mother, then on board with her, was 
an Arkansas widow, who kept a hotel to which commer- 
cial travellers repaired in great force, and at which — so 
I judged from what the young woman had imbibed — 
they paid their way with quite as much slang as cash. 
As I have seen such girls before in my travels in the 
Southwest, and have always found them different, in a 
marked way, from the girls in large towns, I will try 
to repeat what I jotted down of her observations. 

" You're married, ain't you ('' She was a pretty girl, 
as I have said, and she had large, dee]) black eyes. These 
she set, as she spoke, so as to give a searching glance 
that showed her to be expectant of a denial of my 
happy state, yet confident she was right. '' I knew it. 
Well, the married kind are the worst that come to our 

hotel. My mother keeps a hotel at , you know ; 

the captain 's told you, I suppose. It's a village ; but 
I know a few things. The band phu's 'Annie Ilooney' 
where I live, but it ain't up to me, for I know ' Com- 

82 



rades,' and ' Maggie Murphy's Home,' and the very 
latest songs tlie boys bring to the house. That Provi- 
dence feller's in love, ain't he? Well, say, I thought 
it was eithei' love or dyspepsia that was ailing him. Say, 
do you believe in — pshaw ! I was going to ask if you 
believed in love, but of course you're married, and you've 
got to say ' yes.' I always call ' rats ' when 1 hear of 



\ N 




THE MAK FKO.M PKOVIDKNCK 



anybody being in love. Ain't it (lull on this boat ^ I 
never see such men. I believe if a woman knocked 'em 
down they wouldn't speak to her. You're the onh' one 
that ain't o^lued to the bai* ; von and iVdmiral FarraOTit 
— that's what I call the cajitain. lie's nice, ain't he t I 
think he's too cute. I love old men, I do." 

A pause, and a rapt expression of a face turned upon 
the river-bank as if in enjoyment of the tame scenery. 

"Say! what's the latest slang in New York:' Tiie 
boys — travellers that stop at our house, you know — 'ain't 
brought in anything new in a long while. You'i'e from 
Kew Y^ork, ain't you ^ Can't l^elp it, can you? My! 
what a jay-bird I'd look like in New York! Well, you 
needn't get scared; I ain't a-going. I'm ooing to stav 
where I'm on top. I>ob Ingersoll lives in New York, 
don't he? He's immense, ain't he? No, I see you ain't 
stuck on him. Well, neither am I, and I'm going to tell 
you the truth. Everybody my Avay is crazy to I'ead 
everything he writes and says, but I'm going to stick 
to my little old Bible till a good deal smarter man than 
he is comes ahjug. If I was Ingersoll, and knew for 
sure that I was right, I wouldn't stump the country to 
try and take awa\" the comfort of every poor old widow 
and Youne: girl and decent man ; because our belief in 
religion is close on to all that most folks has in this 
world." 

I spoke of my suri)rise that she should believe in re- 
ligion and not in love. 

•• Say !" said she ; '• I help run a hotel, and I agree with 
everybody that comes along— for the price. But I ain't 
in a hotel now. and you're married, and I'll give myself 
away. I made fun of love, but. gee whiz ! I didn't mean 
it. I reckon a girl don't fool you talking that way. 
I'm in love, right smart in love, too; up to my neck. 

" Mv mother hates him. You see, we used to be well 




PASSINC^ A SISTKIM50AT 



ort", and father's peo]>lo \vere 'way u\). and inotlier keeps 
in with all her old friends. They'i'e all as poor as we. 
hut they'i'e pronder'n Lucifer, and mother'd rutlier we'd 
many i)<)or quality folks than see us rich and hajipy if 
our husliands were common stock. Well, I want to do 
what's riii'ht, hut what must I ^o ami do but fall in love 
with a (ierman. lie's a civil eno-ineer, and Ik^ was lay- 
ing out a I'ailroad and come to our house. You'd think 
he was a chump to look at him ; but, say I he's just splen- 
did. Ma, saw what was g'oino" on, and sh<^ ordered me 
not to write to him. I told him that, and lie said for us 
to run away. Oh, he's immense, if he is a German. I 
let on I was real angry. I told him 1 was going to 
mind my mother, and he shouldn't ])ut such ideas in my 
head. I scared him jiale ; but I liked him all the better: 
he was so cut uj). I!ut he said 'AH right,' and wr (h)n"t 



write — except he writes to my aunt, and I see the let- 
ters. We are waiting two years till I'm twenty-one, 
and I'm telling ma I love him three times a day so as 
to get her used to it. ISiie's praying for everything to 
hap))en to Jake, but, say ! it tak(N mor(» than ])rayer to 
kill a German, don't it {" 

Our remarkable ffte-d-tete was interrupted by the an- 
nouncement of dinner, and we put tlie length of the 
cabin between us. I never more than " bade her the 
time of day," as the Irish say, after that, for it seemed 
more profitable to divide my time between the ])ilot- 
house and the towns ashore. At Columbus, Kentucky, 
we saw the first true Southern mansion, with its great 
columns in front and its wide hall through the middle. 
We began to make many stops in midstream to deliver 
the mail by a yawl, manned most skilfully by the second 
mate and several roustabouts. At Slough, Kentucky, 
we saw cotton - fields and corn-fields opposite one 
another, and felt that we were truly in the South. At 
every village the houses were emptied and the levee was 
crowded. Darkies were in })rofuse abundance, and fortv 
were idle to every one who worked. Every woman and 
girl, white and black, had put on some one bright red 
garment, and the historic yellow girls made no more 
effort to hide the fact that they were chewing tobacco 
or snuff than the old negresses did to conceal the pipes 
that they smoked. 

Down and down we went with the current, and no 
longer noticed the deep snoring of the engine, or thought 
of the rushing world to the north .and east. The table 
fare remained remarkably good, the nights' rests were 
unbroken; never did I stop marvelling that the boat 
was not crowded with the tired men of business, to 
whom it offered the most perfect relief and rest. The 
hotel-keepei- and Ikm- fi-ank and beautifid daughter got 



ort' at a ])ictiiresque town fronted l)y ureat oaks. The 
(langliter waved her hand at the pilot-house and called 
out, " Ta-ta." 

There was mild excitement and much blowing of 
whistles when we ]>assed our sister-boat the C/'ff/ of 
Monror — the prize Aucli(n' liner from Natchez. 

•'Hark I" said the first mate in his society voice. 
" Stop talking. Listen to her wheels on the water. It's 
music. It's for all the world like walnuts dropping off 
a tree. When she made her first big run the roust- 
abouts got up a, song about her: 'Did ye hear what 
the Monroe done '.' " 

As the days went by it was apparent that the woods 
extended along both sides of the turbid river, with only 
here and there a clearing for a town or farm or house. 
The population does not cling to the shore ; it is too 
often overflowed. At Pecan Point (pecan is pronounced 
*• pecarn " idong tlie river) we saw the first green grass 
on February 23(1, and the first great plantation. It was, 
as we liave all read, a great cleai'ing, a scattering of 
n<^gro cabins, and tluMi the l)ig mansicju of the planter, 
surrounded by tidy white houses in numbers sufficient to 
form a village. Here a darky put a history of his life 
into a sentence. Being asked how he got along, he 
said : '• Oh. fairly, fairly, sail. Some days dere's chicken 
all de day, but mo' days dey's only feathers." We saw 
the first cane-brake in great clumps, and as each cane 
was clad with leaves from toj) to bottom, the distant 
effect was that of thickets of green bushes.. A¥e saw 
many little plantations of a few acres each, usually with 
a government river light on the bank, and consisting of 
a couple of acres of corn and as much more of cotton. 
We learned that in tins way thousands of negroes have 
kept themselves since the war. AVe saw their log huts, 
their wagons, and the inevitable mule, for a mule and a 

38 



shot-^'iui are the lirst things that are bought, h}- whites 
and blacks, in this region. 

Memphis proved an unex})ectedly lively town, with a 
main street that was rather Western than Southern. 
Here tlie freight from and for the boat was handled in 
sar])risingly quick time, by means of an endless belt 
railway something like a tread-mill. AVe left the dancing- 
lights of the city, and moved out into a pall of smoke 
suspended in fog, and then I saw how well and thor- 
oughly the men in the ])ilot- house knew the mighty 
river. After a run of a few miles tlie ca])tain declared 
it unsafe to go farther. The electric search -light was 
thrown in all directions, but onl_y illuminated a small 
cii'cle closed in by a fog-bank. In al)Solate, black dark- 
ness the pilot and the captain discussed the character of 
tlie shores, to hit upon a hard bank with heavy timber 
to which it would be safe to tie up. They agreed that 
some unseen island across the stream and lower down 
would serve best. 

"Look out foi' the bar just above there," said the 
captain. 

" Yes.'' said the pilot ; '' 1 know where she is." 

The wheel was spun round, the l)oat turned into a 
new course, and presently the search-light was thrown 
upon the very timber-studded reef they sought — as fine 
an exhibition of knowledge, experience, and skill as I 
ever witnessed. 

We now had Mississip])i on the left and Ai'kansas on 
the right, and saw the first commercial monuments of 
the great industry in cotton-seed and its varied prod- 
ucts. This was at Helena, Arkansas, and already, two 
days after AVashington's birthday, the weather had be- 
come so hot that the shade was grateful. The negroes 
warmed to their incessant, laborious work, and the l)lack 
processions to and from the shore at the ft'ecpient land- 

40 



iiigs became leaping lines of gaiTulons toilei's. The river 
becomes veiy wide, often miles wide, in long reaches, 
and at one part the boat's officers pointed to where it is 
eating its way inland, and said that a mile in the inte- 
rior snags are fonnd sitting up in the earth, far beneath 
the roots of the present trees, as they did in the old 
bottom, showing either that the river was once many 
times wider than now, or that it has shifted to and fro 
as it continues to d(>. 

To tell in detail what we saw and did during two 
more days, how Ave saw green willows and then dog- 
wood and jasmine in l)l<)om. or even how Ca])tain Gar- 
veil got out his straw hat at Elmwood, Mississippi, would 
require a ciiapter on the subject. AVe often heard the 
cry of '• Mark twain,"' which Samuel I). Clemens took as 
his no)n de plume ^ and a line about that may be interest- 
ing. The Providence, laden down till her deck touched 
the water, drew a little more than four feet ; and though 
the river has a depth of SO to 120 feet, there are places 
where bars made it necessary to take soundings. When- 
ever this was done a negro on the main-deck heaved the 
lead, and another on the second deck echoed his calls. 
These are the cries I heard, and when the reader under- 
stands that a fathom, or six feet, is the basis of calcula- 
tion, he will comprehend the system. These, then, were 
the cries : 

" Five feet." " Six feet." '' Nine feet." 

-Mark twain" (12 feet). 

"A quarter less twain" (10^ feet) — that is to smv, a 
quarter of a fathom less than two fatiioms. 

•• A quarter twain " (134 feet). 

'■Mark three" (IS feet). 

'• x\. quarter less three." - A quarter three " (194^ feet). 
•" Deep four." '* Xo bottom." 

The tows that we saw were too peculiar t(^ miss men- 

41 



tion. On this river the loads are " towed befoi-e" in- 
stead of behind. The principle nnderlying the cnslom 
is that of the wlieelbarrow, and is necessitated by the 
curves in this, the crookedest hirge I'iver in the world. 
The barges and flats are fastened solidly ahead of the 
tng-boat in a great fan-sha])ed mass, and the steamer 
backs and pushes and gi'a(hially turns tlie bulk as if it 
had hold ()f the handles of a barrow in a crooked lane. 
AVe saw a famous boat, tlie W/'/.^o/i, from Pittsburg, come 
along behind a low black island. It proved to l)e a tow 




A KAFT OK ]A)GS 



of large, low, uncovered barges, thirty of tliem,('ach car- 
rying 1000 tons. She was therefore pushing .si 05. (too 
worth of freight, for the coal sells in New Oi'leans at 
,^3 50 a ton. The work of propelling these tows is so 
ingenious that the ])ilots are handsomely paid. They 
cannot drive their loads ; they merely guide them, and 
a, mistake or bad judgment in a bend may cost thou- 
sands of dollars through a wreck. The l)arges ai'e made 
of merely inch-and-a-half stuff, cost ^TOO each, and are 
seldom used twice. They are sold to wreckers. 

43 



This is in the region wliere the levees, that are said 
to have cost ^5^150,000,000, line the river -side through 
whole States — mere banks of earth sucii as railways are 
built on where hllings are required. Some of these are 
far away from the water, and some are close beside it ; 
some are earthy, some are grassy, and some are heaped 
up with banks of Cherokee roses that blossom in bou- 
quets of hundreds of yai'ds in lengtii. These are the 
levees into which the crawlish dig and the water eats, 
and we read of crevasses that follow and destroy foi't- 
unes oi' submerge counties. lUit they are mere inci- 
dents in the laziest, most alluring and I'efreshing, j<-)ur- 
ney that one tired man ever enjoyed. 

4:j 



II 

NEW ORLEANS, OUR SOUTHERN CAPITAL 

'' The biggest little city in the country," is what an 
adopted citizen of New Orleans calls that town. With 
but little more than a quarter of a million of inhabi- 
tants, the Crescent City has most of the features of a 
true capital and metro})olis. It is among the few towns 
in our country that can be comjiared with New York in 
respect of their metropolitan qualitlcations, but New 
Orleans leads all the rest, though in })opulation it is 
small beside any of the others. It has an old and ex- 
clusive society, whose claims would be acknowledged in 
any of our cities. It supports grand opera; its clubs 
are fully what the term miplies, and not mere empty 
club-houses. It has tine theatres and public and church 
buildings. The joys of the table, which Chesterfield 
ranked first among the dissipations of intellectual men, 
are provided not only in many fine restaurants and in 
the clubs, but in a multitude of homes. No city has finer 
markets. Its commerce is with all the world, and its 
])opulation is cosmopolitan, with all which a long contin- 
uance of those conditions implies. Like the greater 
cities, it has distinct divisions or quarters, which offer 
the visiting sight-seer novehyand change. Its "sights" 
are the accumulation of nearly two centuries, and of 
Spanish, French, and American origin. 

It is of value to study the qualities which make the 
Southern ca])ital what it is, because it is evident that it 

44 



is to become the chief wintei* resort of those who jour- 
ney southward to escape the winters in the North. Tlic 
iiinrdi (■//'''••^•carnival is advertising its attractions to such 
an extent that the hist occurrence of this festival fouiul 
100,000 strangei's there, i-epresenting every State and 
large citv in the Union. It is on the southern or winter 
route to (California, it is on tlie way from the West and 
jS^ortiiwest to Florida and the (Georgia resorts, and it 
stands in the ]mth to Texas and 3.Iexico. It is the l)est 
of all the American winter resorts, because it has what 
the others possess (wdjich is to say, warm weatliei' and 
sunshine), and, in addition, it offers tlie theatres, shoi)S. 
restaurants, crowds, clubs, and multiform entertain- 
ments of a city of the first class. It is par ciu-eUence a 
city of fun, fair women, rich food, and flowers. Its open- 
air surface-drainage svstem is about to be replaced liv a 
different one that may not be more wholesome, but will 
have the advantage of being out of sight. Only one 
other reform must be instituted, and even that is ahnost 
accomplished. The local idea that a hotel which was the 
Ijest in the country in 1837 would remain lirst-class foi'- 
ever was an untenable proposition. A new management, 
fixed rates that do not bound into the re^lm of extor- 
tion when a crowd comes along, and a modei'u miUion- 
dollar establishment would fetch more persons there, 
keep them longer, and send them away liappier than 
most of the citizens have any idea of. Those other 
cities that are at the end of a long route of travel, out 
on the Pacific coast, exemplify the value of first-class 
hotels in all their histories. Tlie consequence is that in 
a tiny city called Fairhaven, at the upper end of Puget 
Sound, there is a better hotel than can be found along 
the wdiole coast of the (lulf of Mexico west of Florida. 
The Pacific coast ])eo|)le have found out that tourists 
will pass an otherwise important place to stop in one 

1.-, 



that b(\asts <x line hotel. We Americans will exchange 
a Wj^oming stage-coach for a log-cabin inn, but we will 
not leave a Pullman train foi- a bad hotel if we can help 
it. It is good to kiK^w that a great modern hotel-build- 
inij- is at last under \va,v there, for strano-ers arriving: 
in Xew ()i'l('aus could not all be expected to know how 
remarkably line are the better class of boarding and 
lodging })laces, or how charming a- mode of living it is 
to secure good rooms and coffee of a morning, and dine 
about in the restaurants. 

On iiKirdi c//v^s•. the day before the beginniug of Lent, 
is the time to be in New Orleans, particularly for a 
stranger, because in the scenes of the carnival is found 
the key to the character of the people. They are not 
like the rest of us. Our so-called carnivals, wherever and 
whenever we have tried to hold them, have been mere 
commercial ventures, illustrated with advertisements, 
carried out by hired men, and paid for by self-seeking 
])ersons, \\\\o had not the badving of any populace. But 
in Xew Orleans the carnival displays are wholly de- 
signed to amuse and entertain the pleasure-loving, light- 
hearted, laro'cly Latin people who originally took part. in 
them, but who have surrendered active participation to 
the leading and wealthy men of the town. 

The secret carnival societies are six in number, and 
are named the Argonauts, Atlanteans, Krewe of Pro- 
teus. ]\ristiek Krewe of Comus, Momus, and Ilex. Busi- 
ness men. and those who have earned the additional 
title ()f "society men."' make uj) the membership of the 
societies. If any one or two of these coteries fancy 
themselves of " higher social tone" than the others, the 
fact would be natural, but the distinction will not be 
pointed out here. The oldest of the societies is the 
Comus, which was organized in 1857 to give a night 
parade and ball. These it has given ever since. In 

4(; 



1879 the Momus Society came into being; in 1880, the 
Rex Society; in 1881, the Krewe of Proteus; and in 
1801, the Atlanteans and Argonauts. Tlie members pay 
into the treasuries of these organizations a fixed sum 
per annum, and this, a(kled togetliei- and drawn upon by 
a treasurer, v.'lio supervises all tlie accounts, is used to 
defray the ex})ense of the whole carnival. 

The keeping of this especial festival is a very old cus- 
tom of Latin and Catholic origin, like the establishment 
of the city itself. For many years it was entirely i)op- 
ular and promiscuous in the sense that it was unordered 
and without either head or ])rogramme. The Mistick 
Krewe of Comus brought order and form into the first 
night parade in 1857, and in 1880 the Kex Society, by 
taking the lead in the open-air pageantry on the day 
before mai'dt r//v/.<?, made it ]iossible and advantageous 
to do away with the ])romiscuous masking and merry- 
making, attendant upon which had been the throwing of 
lime and flour, the drunkenness, and the usual disorder 
which must everywhere characterize a loosely managed 
festival of the sort. Since then the only spontaneous 
masking among the people has been by children ; there 
has never been a serious affray; there are no more tipsy 
persons in the streets than on any other day ; and there 
has seldom been an occasion to make an arrest for a 
cause traceable to the carnival spirit. 

All our cities are distinguished foi' the orderliness of 
tlieir holiday crowds, but such absolute self-co!itrol as is 
shown by the people of Kew Orleans at mardl (//■as is a 
thing above and beyond what is known anywhere else 
in the country. To me it was inexplicable. I could un- 
derstand the patient good-nature of a people trained for 
an occasion, but in the crowds were 1()0,()<»0 strangers, 
many of them of the sort that would naturally be at- 
tracted to a festival that was to l)e followed l)y a ])rize- 

47 



tight between noted pugilists. It must have been that 
all caught the spirit of the occasion. It is chiefly on 
Canal Street that the bulk of the holiday crowd assem- 
bles when tiiere is a parade, but only ten ])oliceme;i 




ON (.'ANAL STUEKT 



were detailed to keep order dui'ing the day ])arade of 
Rex in lSt>2; onl_y sev^en for the greater night pageant 
of the Com us Society. 

The actual mardl gras celebration is only the climax 
of a series of festivities lasting ten days or moi'e. First 
is held the I)al des Roses, in the week l)efore the week 
which precedes the puljlic carnival. This ball is purely a 
''society atfaii',"' hke our Pa.triai'chs' Ijall in Xew York. 

The week which follows is one of almost daily sensa- 
tions. First, on Monday, the Argonauts begin the pro- 
lonii'ed f(^stival with a tournev and chariot- racino-. A 
l)all at night follows. On Tuesday the Atlanteans give 
their ball. On Thursday ^foinus gives a ball, with tab- 
is 



Jeaux, in costiiinc. Oii Friday <>l" this gala weelc is held 
the Carnival german. The Carnival (Ternian Club is 
composed of twenty-five society men, who give the ger- 
man by subscription. Onlv seventy-five couples partici- 
pate in it. 

The carnival j^roj^er is celebrated with pageantry and 
dancing that occupy the afternoons and niglits of Mon- 
day and " Fat Tuesday." Rex, the king of the carnival, 
comes to t(^wn on Monday afternoon. Who he is a few 
persons know at the time; who he was is sometimes 
published, as in 1801, and more often is not. A\niat is 
called a royal yacht is chosen to bi-ing him from some 
mysterious realm over which he rules in tlie Orient, to 
visit his winter capital in the Crescent City. Last time 
the royal yaciit was the revenue -cutter iidJi'esfoiK Imt 
ordinarily the societies liire one of the big river steam- 
boats. The yacht is always accompanied l)y ten or fif- 
teen other steamers, gay ly decorated, crowded with men 
and women, and appointed with bands of music and all 
that makes good cheer. It is supposed that the yacht 
has taken the king aboard at the jetties. The fleet re- 
turns, and the royal landing is made u})on the levee at 
the foot of (/anal Street, amid a fanfaronade of the 
whistles of boats, locomotives, and factories, and the 
firing of guns. The king is met by many city officers 
and leading citizens, who are called the dukes of the 
realm, and constitute his royal court. These temporary 
nobles wear civilian attire, with a badge of gold, and 
bogus jewels as a decoration. Many persons in cai'- 
riages accompany J:hem. A pi-ocession is formed, Jind 
the principal features of the dis])lay are a gorgeous lit- 
ter for the king, a litter carrying the royal keys, and a 
number of s))lendi(l litters in whi(th ride gayly cos- 
tumed women, re])resentiiig the favorites of the harem. 
This the public sees and enjoys. 

D 49 



The king" goes to the City Ilall acc()in})aiiio(l as 1 have 
described. The way is lined with tens of tliousands of 
S})ectators ; flags wave fi'oni every building; music is 
plaving, the sun is shining; the whole scene, with the 
gorgeous pageant threading it, is magnificent. At the 
City Hall, the Duke of Crescent City, who is the Mayor, 
welcomes TJex. and gives him tlie ke^vs and the fi'eedom 
of the city. The king mysteriously disap])ears after 
that, presumably to his palace. 

That night, the night before iii(i/'<li (//■"■•<, the Krewe 
of Proteus holds its parade and ball, and in extent and 
cost and splendor this is a trul\' representative pair of 
uudertakino's. "A Dream of the A\^getable Kingdom" 
was what the last I'roteus parade was entitled. It con- 
sisted of a series of elaborate and splendid Hoats form- 
ing a line many blocks long, and representing Avhatever 
is most ])ictures(|ue, or can be made so, among vegetal)le 
growths. The Moat that struck me as the most peculiar 
and noteworthy bore a huge watermelon, peopled, as all 
the devices were, with ga^dy costumed men and women, 
and decked with nodding blossoms, waving leaves, danc- 
in": tendrils, and the i>"litter and sheen of metal, lustrous 
stones, and silk, nutterflies, catei'pillars, bii'ds. a great 
squin'el on the acorn float, snails, and nameless grotescjue 
animal forms were seen u]ion the vegetables and their 
leaves, while men dressed as fairies, of both sexes, were 
grouped picturesquely on every one. These devices were 
not inartistic or tawdrv. They were made by skilled 
workmen trained for this particular work, and were not 
only superior to any of the show pieces we see in other 
l)ageants elsewhere — they wove ecpial to the best that 
ai'e exhibited in theatres. They were displayed to the 
utmost advantage in the glare of the torches and flam- 
beaux carried by the men who led the horses and marched 
beside the hidden wheels. The figures in Paris -made 




CREOLE TYPES 



costumes, theatrical })aint, and masks Avere 150 to 2(>o 
members of the Krewe — serious and earnest men of af- 
fairs during- the other days of each year. 

On Tuesda\% mdrdl gra-s^ Rex really made his ap- 
pearance, leading a pageant called "the symbolism of 
colors," just su(;h anothei" display of the blending of 
stroun- and soft coloi's. but a thousand-fold more (b'tli 



cult to render satisfactorilj^ by daylight. The twenty 
(Miornions floats in line represented boats, castles, tow- 
ei'S. arches, kiosks, clonds, and thrones, and one, that I 
thoug'ht the best of all, a great painter's palette, l^'ing 
against two vases, and having living female figures re- 
cumbent here and there to represent such heaps of color 
as might be looked for on a palette in use. (/'anal Street, 
one of the broadest avenues in the world, was newly 
paved with hunuin forms, and thousands of others were 
<»n tiie revie wing-stands built before the faces of the 
houses, over the pavements. The sight of such a vast 
concourse of ])eople was as grand as the chromatic, ser- 
])entlike line of floats that wound across and acnjss the 
street. Tiiat nigiit all tlie peo})le tui'ued out once again 
and witnessed the parade of the Mistick Ivrewe of Co- 
mus, a Japanesque series of floats called '' Xippon, the 
Land of tlie liising Sun." The display was, to say the 
least, as line as any of the season. 

But the splendid function, one that I never saw ex- 
celled in this country, was the ball of the same society, 
that night, in the old French Opera-house. All the 
kings and their queens, representing all the carnival 
societies, were in the o])ening (juadrille, all crowned and 
robed aiul with their splenditl suites. Looking down 
upon that brilliant mass of dancers were seven rows of 
the belles of the city — rows unbroken by the jarring 
j)resence of a man. These ladies wei'e all simply at- 
tired in white, pink, ])ale blue, and all the soft faint 
colors which distiuii'uish the dress of New Oi'leans 
women. Llere and there a young girl wore upon her 
liead a narrow fillet of gold; but jewels wei'e few and 
far a])art- — a striking omission which greatly dignified 
the gathering and enhanced the beauty of the spectacle. 
If the reader has seen the beauteous women of Spanish 
descent and the petite and sweet-faced French Creoles 



of that city, let liini fancy these, and tlie loveliest Amer- 
ican belles, forniing seven rows in a theatre of grand 
size — and then let him try his best to picture to himself 
the wondrous garden of personilied flowers that was 
tlius presented. 

I luive said tliat "society" controls the o[)era. This 
institution, regularly maintained only in ]Vew ( )rleans, 
of all the cities of our country, is almost self-su])port- 
ing. It is grand opera, and it is always Fnuich, and 




IX Till-: OLD KKENCU CJIAKTKK 



given in the old French ()i)era- house, which reminds 
New-Yorkers of the "Academy," in Fourteenth Street. 
The troupe that I saw was a complete one, with a double 



set of leading' voices, with ii corps dc Ixilhf. and a force 
of hovf'e artists for the ])resentation of comic opera, 
which is given at reguhar intervals, and always on Sun- 
dav nights. Many of the chief performers were from 
the Grand Opera of Paris. 

The fashionable society of ISTew Orleans is not in any 
sense a plntocracy. The wealth of those who have it 
is shared by or hidden from those who have it not. This 
is becanse the pride of birth and family, inherent in all 
our Southerners who have an excuse for it. meets an 
equal pride of family and name among the ])Oorer 
Creoles. The two combine to create a large exclusive 
set. among whose meml)ers the terrible ravages of the 
war spread a. disaster that is ])rivately understood and 
publicly ignored. xVmong the fashionables, the I'ich and 
the impoverished meet on a footing whii-h the rich are 
at such pains to nudce equal that they are oftc^n ]>lain in 
their entertainments in order that they may not hurt 
the sensitiveness or strain the resources of the others 
when it is their turn to open their houses. The men 
and women of this society maintain among themselves 
the purest, most wholesome, and honest conditions, un- 
blemished by any hint of scandal, latitude of speech, 
or debatable behavior. 

Again, while " societ}^ " here loves pleasure keenly, 
and, as we have seen, makes a business of some sorts of 
it, there is, nevertheless, an intellectual wing to it, with 
a liking for and an inclination to pursue art and litera- 
ture. Several ladies, led, ])erhaps, by Mrs. Mollie P]. ]\Iooi'e 
Davis, who has a marvellous gift for gathering bright 
folks about her in her (piaint house in the French (juar- 
ter, lind it a pleasui'e to entertain and introduce such 
visitors as have interested them by their w<M'k. In the 
intervals between these gracious ministrations these la- 
dies — with not a. blue-stocking, but a host of beauties 

54 








iiinong tliein — entertain one another with well-written 
]iapers. wise debates, and music and recitations at meet- 
ings that onlv end with the fi'actnre of a circle that has 
formed around a 
tempting dis[)lay of 
refreshments. 

Though a winter 
resort, New Orleans 
is pre-eminently a 
summer town — a city 
of galleried houses, of 
gardens, of llowers, 
and of shops which 
open wide upon the 
streets. It is hot there 
from June to Novem- 
ber, and during those 
months the Ameri- 
cans who can afford 
to do so exchange it 
for the mountains 
and the forests. Tiie 

wealthy among the Creoles are apt to go to France. 
and there are many who divide the year thus, wintering 
in New Orleans and summering in Paris. Those who 
are obliged to stay insist that it is not (h-eadfully hot, 
and that there is almost always a breeze. They have no 
patent on that ; we say the same thing in New York' 
and Philadelphia and Boston and St. Louis. JJut I sns- 
pect New Orleans has a very debilitating air in summer. 
The most nnobservant visitor can see one general proof 
of its heat in its architecture, whether it l)e of the new 
or the old, the Creole or the American houses. I refer 
to the ubiquitons balconies — " galleries " they call them 
tiiere. And for every gallery you see from lh<> streets 



AN OI.D COUKT IN THE FKENCH QUAHTEIt 



there is at least one in the l)ack. on the courts and gai'- 
(lens. Thus tiie Creoles, having' the warm weatlier solely 
in view, are like the Italians at home, who stoop over 
theii". charcoal hand-stoves during the few davs when it 
is vei'v chilly, sutfei'ing a little time in order to enjoy the 
greater ])art of the year. I did not hear how they dress 
in summer. l)ut when I rode through the Garden District 
— the new ])art of the town — my lady friends pointed to 
the galleries and said : " You should see them in the sum- 
mer, before the people leave or after they come back. 
The entire population is out-of-doors in the air. and the 
galleries are loaded with w(jmen in soft colors, mainly 
Avhite. They have white dresses by the dozen. They 
go about without their hats, in carriages and the street 
cai's, visiting up and down the streets. In -doors one 
must spend one's wlujle time and energy in vibrating a 
fan." They liave moscpiitoes thei"e, but they have also 
electric fans which moscpiitoes eschew. 

The Avater su])ply is from the Mississi])pi, which has 
had millions ex})ended upon the im})rovement of its 
l)aidvs. but not a cent upon its watei". It is not offei'ed 
in the clubs, but they did not hesitate to serve it in the 
old-fashioned hotels, the burning of one of which has 
led to the Ituilding of the greatly needed modern one. 

In the clubs mineral water is freely set about on the 
dining-tables. This is attractive to the eye. but those 
who have not already made the discovery will tind that 
etfei'vescent waters ai'e too thin and gaseous to satisfy 
thirst ; in fact, nothing but honest water will do that. 
Therefore I drank a great deal of Mississi})]*! water, and 
followed the local custom of dashing a pitcher of fil- 
tered fluid over me after each bath. The residents of the 
American (juarter use it filtered. One of the strangest 
and most distinctive features of New Orleans is the pres- 
ence of the collecting-tanks for rain-water in almost ev- 

50 



ery door-yai'd. Rising above the })aliiis,tlie rose-ti'ellises, 
and the stately magnolias are thes(^ huge, hooped, green 
cylinders of wood. They suggest enormous water-mel- 
ons on end and with the tops cut ott'. The Creoles keep 
the rain-water cool in enoi'mons jars of pottery sitting 
about in their pretty courts — such jars as Ali Baba had 
an adventure with, in which oil was once stored, and 
pr(tl)ably is now, in the ()rieiit. They arc^ from halt' t<_) 
two-thirds the size of tiour-barrels, symmetrical in shape, 
and come from the south of France. They are ])ainted 
with some light fresh c-olor, and prettily ornament the 
cool, paved, jalousied courts.. Xine-tenths of the water 
used for cooking and drink- 
ing is this cistern watei', 
and when the cisterns get 
low, as they do two or 
three times a year, thei'e is 
actual sutfei'ing in the poor 
districts, back from the ri v- 
er. The i-iver water was 
not filtered when I was 
there, l)ut lai-ge filters 
"were conti'acted for, and 
are by this time supplying 
an abundance of clear wa- 
ter. 

I should think that the' 
coolest place in Kew Oi'- 
leans in summer must be 
the Boston Club. It sug- 
gests sonu' club - houses 
that I have seen in tiie 
Cuban cities, but it is lit- 
tle like any other in this countiw. It is white with- 
(nit and light and o[)en within. \n o[>en ])orch on one 




WINDOW IN OLD FKENCIl QUAKTEU 



side, hidden from tlie street, serves to cool the entire 
liouse in summer, and as a pleasant retreat for card- 
])layers and smokers all through the year. There are 
four notable clubs in New Orleans, and they stand near 
one another in a row upon Canal Street. The Boston 
is the oldest and choicest. Jt was organized in 1845, 
and was not named in hon(n' of the Athens of America, 
but after a game at cards which was ])opulai' at the 
time. Another game furnished the ('hess Clul) its title, 
thouo-h that is but a nickname, the full title being *' The 
Chess, Checkers, and Whist Club." The llarnujuy is the 
.Jewish club, in essence, though it is not sectarian. The 
most modern house and most youthful club in member- 
shij) aiul spirit was the Pickwick ; but since my visit 
there this club has vacated its hue (piarters. which have 
become those of a hotel of the same name. The clul) is 
temporarily housed in a, more modest manner. The 
Boston Club, always the more exclusive, has taken upon 
itself the full burden of popularity as well, but it does 
not offer what the l^ickwick did in its glory. There, 
after the opera or a counti'v ride, or rout of any sort, 
the most brilliant beauties of the old and the new town 
were to have been seen in the softened light of electric- 
ity lunching with their cavaliers, while the usual club 
routine went on above the ladies restaurant as if there 
were no women near. 

The best place to see the famed belles of New Orleans 
is in the French ( )pera-house on a fashionable night at 
the opera. Then there are scores there — blondes with 
limpid blue eyes, and complexions of roses and cream ; 
brunettes of the purest t^qies with rounding forms, great 
black orl)s, hair of Japanese black, and skins of softest 
brown ; Spanish Creoles with true oval faces, long nar- 
row eyes, the same soft sun - kissed complexions, with 
])roud bearing, and mouths like Cupid's l)ow. With 

r>s 



ffL 




THE NEW ORLEANS YACHT CLUB 



them are our American gii-ls from all over the coun- 
try, boasting the eclectic beauty of many blended n;i- 
tionalities. The place is like a great bouquet. They 
dress alnnjst like Parisians, and that is one great secret 
of the splendid fame they have won. 

To a great extent the Creoles even now remain apart 
from the Americans, in ]iursnance of the spirit that led 
their ancestors never to cross Canal Street be^'ond tlieir 
own old (juarter, and even to riot when the ship])ing be- 
gan to collect in front of tlie American half of the town. 

.■)!» 



l>ut there is more and more mixing of the races, and 
marriao^es between the two o;row more and more fre- 
quent, so that it is felt that another generation may 
brealc down all tlie false barricades between the peo- 
ples. As to the marriages, it is said to reqnire a bold 
and indomitable man to court a Creole, because when he 
calls upon her he finds the court and the parlor dark, 
and he waits while the servants light up the place for 
him. Then the parents come in, European fashion, and 
sit ill the room while he "sparks'" the ravisher of his 
heart. But all agree that when the end is come, and she 
is his bride, he is going to be envied among men, for 
there are no better wives or lovelier mothers than those 
dark-tressed, brown-skinned, graceful, soft-voiced Creole 
women. 

It gives a ])eculiar sensation to hear Cable abused by 
the Creoles — and 3'ou never can hear anything but abuse 
of him. '' George W. Cable and Benjamin Butler? Bah! 
Let them show themselves in New Orleans ; that's all." 
This astonished me, though 1 had heard I was to expect 
it. It had seemed to me that they must in their hearts 
recognize the tenderness with which he deals with raan}^ 
of his heroes and heroines, the grace with which he 
clothes them, the soft light he turns upon most of them ; 
and to-day I believe that in their hearts they know that 
he has done for them something of what Longfellow did 
for the Acadians in " Evangeline.'' Surely he it was who 
lifted them to a sentimental and romantic realm, out 
from their walled -in courts of the French quarter. I 
still believe that it is onl}' a sense of mistaken self-re- 
s])ect that causes them to fancy that they must assail 
him, because they showed me many of the places he 
described, and told me with poorly hidden pride that 
much, aye, most of what he describes is true. But he 
\vas a Xew ( )rleans man, and should not have betrayed 

60 




AT TIIK OLD KI'vKNCII OPKK.V- HOUSE 



his neighbors. Some said " he was of tlie South, yet he 
writes like an old-time abolitionist." And 3^et these are 
not the true reasons for their animosity, not tlie whole 
truth. I believe I am right when I say that what really 
wonnds them most deeply is his mocking their broken 
Engiisli. As a writer, I have never been so certain of 
hurting the feelings of others as when I imitated their 
dialects, or mistakes in grammar, or awkward efforts to 
pronounce our words. It angers every race; and the 
moi'e intelligent the race, the deeper the sting and the 
anger. I am the more sure this diagnosis of the case in 
])()int is correct, because the manner in which he makes 
his characters talk was always bitterl}^ alluded to, if at 
all. "■ He puts negro words into our mouths ; he copies 
tlie servants' talk, and puts it in the mouths of the la- 
dies and gentlemen." 

The funei-al notices tacked upon the telegraph poles 
and awning posts interest strangers. I have lieard 
Xorthern men in business in New Orleans speak in 
praise of this method of publishing the deaths, because, 
tliey say, these cards are read when the newspaper 
funeral notices might not l)e. I copied one or two, and 
will reproduce them here, with the munes changed, of 
course : 



JEANNE, 

Fille de James Coudort et de Adele Palm. 



Les amis et coniiaissaiico dcs families C'ouderl, Palm. Rochefort, et 
Bellecamp sont pries d'assister il ses funeiailles, qui auroul lieu Same- 
di, apres-midi, a 4 heures. 

Le convoi parlira de la resideuce des parents, No. 2091 rue Plaisaiit, 
entre St. Jacque et Cnuroime. 



r.'3 



LION NET 




Ce matin, Dlrnaixche, 19 Aoiit 1900, 
(1 7 heiires, 

AIM Emile Lionnet, 

age de 57 otis. 

Ses (trnis ft connaissances, airisi que eeiix 
de la famille, sont invites d assister d ses 
fiirierailles, qui awrojit lieii Deniaiii Matin, 
LUMDI, d 10 heures precises. 

Le eonvoi partira de sa derriiere resi- 
dence, encoignure Esplanade et Derhigny. 
Nouveile-Orleans, 19 Anut 1900. 



MPRIMERie PHILIPPE, 40, HUE SAINT-LOUlS. 



JOHN BONNOT, 45. Rue Sainte-Anne. 



And here is one in Eniiiish 



BIRMINGHAM. 



DIED. 

Wednesday evening. Mareii 2, isy2, at half-past six o'clock, K. L. 
IWii.MiMiiiAM. aged fortv-seven years. 



Tlie friends and acquaintances (if llie Birmingham, Smitli, Bobinsoii, 
and Decatur families are respectfull}' invited to attend tlie funeral, 
which will take place this ('I'hursday) evening at half-past four o'clock 
from Triint V Church. 



An eccenti'ic gentleman, exercising the inahenable 
privileges of freetlom, makes it his bnsiness to reatl all 
these placards, and to tear down those that have served 
their pnr})ose, else no one can say what would become of 
the poles and posts as they acciimnlated. Another 
custom in mortuary matters there is the publication in 
the Pleaij'inc- and Times-Democrat of eulogistic refer- 
ences to the dead by way of notifying the public of the 
sad occurrence. These obituary cards are quite as pe- 
culiar in their own way as the rhyming notices of Bal- 
timore and Philadelphia. 

Without turning far from the subject, it ma}' be said 
that (though I do not in any degree favor the custom 
which leads our citizens everywhere to insist upon driv- 
ing' visitors to the cemeteries as first among the '' sights '' 
of our cities) it is certain that the cemeteries of New 
Orieaiis are worth a visit. They are not only unlike 
any burial-yards known to the rest of the country, they 
are beautifid as well. The grounds are laid out much as 
are onv own in the Xorth, but the white shell roads and 
paths enhance the neat and tidy effect such ])laces usu- 

f>:! 



LE 





AI 



Tuesday, June 25, 1901, at 7:15 p. m., 

Carrie L. McDonnell, 

WIFE OF JAS. J. LEGEAI, 

aged SI year's and 7 months, 
a native of this city. 



The relatives, friends and acquaintances 
of the family are respectfully invited to at- 
tend the funeral, from her late residence, 
100^ Louisiana avenue, corner Constance, 
on JVEDJVESDAY EVEXLYG, 2Gth inst., 
at 5 o'clock. 

New Orleans, June 26, 1901. 

•JMlLIPPt S PHINItHV. 10 SI. LOUIS STREET 

JOHN BONNOT, 45 St. Ann Street. 



L 



(^Zyi^ ^ <:?-«^x_=L^ ^::l^^^iZZ:/ <t<<s^2^ 



all}^ boast. They are truly "cities of the dead,"' for tlie 
tombs are houses built upon the ground, and providetl 
with cubby -hole or drawerlike compartments, to l)e 
sealed with a marble slab as each coffin is put in place. 
The term " oven tombs " describes them well. I can 
easily believ^e that in no other cemeteries is seen such 
evidence of a great outlay of mouey, for these mauso- 
leums are built of marble and granite, or, at the worst, of 
brick stuccoed to look like stone. Some are round- 
topped, but more are of the form of miniature (Grecian 
temples. They exhibit statues, crowns, crosses, and even 
most elaborate panelling and carving. These buildings 
rise white and gray from mounds of green, beside white 
shell roads, beneath orange-trees laden with golden fruit, 
mag-nolias, cedars, and oaks, some of the trees beino- 
dra])ed or bearded with pendant moss. 

(Jf course it is understood thiit tlie burials are above- 
ground because of the moisture in the soil. Yet I saw 
earthy graves in a shabby little cemetery in the city, 
where also weeping- willows lent a familiar aspect to 
the scene. This was at the yard of the chapel of St. 
Roche (pronounced " Roke "), by far the strangest place 
of worship I have seen — even in Canada or California. 
Standing up tall and shallow, like a kitchen clock, is a 
little brick chapel whose front is all but hidden behind 
ivy. It has kneeling-benches but no ]iews, and under its 
altar is a recumbent life-size ligure of the Saviour, un- 
clad as lie was lifted from the cross. But it is what is 
on the altar that is most novel. All about upon its 
shelves are lozenges of marble shaped like great visiting- 
cards. On them are carved such legends as " Thanks" ; 
"Thanks, J. AY/'; " JVIerci "; " Tlianks, granted June 30, 
1891." Hanging by ribbons on the same altar are wax 
casts of little baby hands, or hands and fore-arms, or tin\^ 
feet. One large pair of liands stands there in a ghiss 




H. 






^».UvU.« 







ALONG THE SHELL KOAD 



case. All these are offerings of those for whose prayers 
such members have been rescued from disease or use- 
lessness. A double score of candles burn on the altar, 
and as many men and women pray before it. Tlie four- 
teen stations of the cross, seen in all Catholic churches, 
are here placed out-ofnhjors in little shelters of open- 
work wood, upon which vines creep and illuminate their 

6(i 



foliage witli blossoms. It would be difficult to find in 
New Orleans anything nioi'e picturesque than is seen 
when ho})eful women are passing from one to another 
of these holy emblems, to kneel at each in prayer. 

A very remarkable German was in charge of this sanc- 
tuar}^ and unconsciously relieved the tension upon those 
who were awed b}' the funereal and religious character 
of the })remises. lie did not mean to be funny, but 
he was exceedinglv so. lie went about hammerino' the 
virgins and saints on tlie figured tablets of the stations 
of the cross, and saying, " You see dot. Dot vos pronze 
from Munich ; chenuwine pronze." He bustled into 
the chapel, past all the kneeling supplicants, and talked 
about the things there — even the most sacred ones — 
like an auctioneer. Those who knew him very well all 
united in declaring that he was a zealous and dutiful 
janitor. 

'' Ach," he exclaimed to me, " I do vish dey vouldn't 
bury all der time. Ef'en on Sundays dey bury ; all der 
whole vhile it goes on,und 1 can't get avay b}^ mineself 
for a rest. In Chermany, vhere I used to been, ve took 
Sundays off, und tied from a bell alretty some strings 
to der big toe of each corpse. Sure, then, if der corpse 
gets alive und moves, der bell rings — eh 'i But here it 
is efery day de same — bury, bury, all der whiles. Veil, 
it don't matter, pecause vhen I do go avay to haf a 
gwiet glass of beer I get no beace. Everybody knows 
me, und everybody points me out und says, ' See ! dot's 
der olt man from St. Koche's.' " 

He wondered if he would ever be where ])eople would 
not point him out and tell one another who he was. 
Alas ! it will not be in heaven, good old soul. Even 
those whose tongues are silent in the yard you watch 
w'ill find voices there to tell the others who you are. 

I have neither the space nor the inclination to de- 

67 



scribe the French market, the cathedral, the French 
quarter, and those other really charming bits of the 
city which have been the subjects of descriptive arti- 
cles and letters since our grandfathers' days. I like 
them none the less, and they remain powerful magnets 
to draw future battalions of tourists there. These are 
parts of the thing we call the '' foreign air" of the city, 
and I hope that with the manifest new energy of New 










-_ "ri, 



--^-^' - ' -^ sJ# 



THE QUEER OLD CHURCH OF ST. ROCHE 

Orleans they will not be " improved." I suppose it 
cannot be expected that people will ever understand 
the full value of the relics of their past. The bric-a-brac 
we treasure is always what some one else has parted 
with. Here in Kew Orleans, as up in Montreal, the 
people insist upon taking visitors to see the new part 
of each city, among the modern residences ; and the 
visitors persist in hastening back to the old French quar- 
ters, alwa3's and every time. 

St. Charles Avenue and the Garden District are al- 
most semi-rural, like the best parts of "the Hill" in 
Brooklyn, or the outlying parts of our liner cities. The 
large galleried houses stand back in broad gardens, with 

68 



the most beautiful surroundings of lawn, banana-plants, 
orange -ti-ees, clouds of roses — especially of Cherokee 
roses, whicli bloom in clouds — magnolias, China berries, 
and hedges of many sorts. Trees of pretty shapes antl 
lordly shade-giving quality stand in ranks along the 
streets, and the views down the cross-streets are bow- 
evy ; often they are vistas under meeting branches. 
There are some rambling old Southern mansions with 
halls through the centres, some modern stately man- 
sions, and some little boxes of the universal sort that 
coquet with the tiresome memory of good Queen Anne. 











THE CLAIBORNE COTTAGES— A SUMMER RESORT OF NEW ORLEANS IN 
THE PINY WOODS 

Those bashful men whose courage grows weak on the 
door-steps where they are about to make a call would 
never, I am sure, get into the average house in the Gar- 
den District if they did not know any more about New 
Orleans customs than I did when I paid my first visit 
there. They would find before them a door with a 
handle, and no othei' protuberance — button, knocker, 
l^uU, handle, or anything else. IVFuch to the delight of 
several very young ladies on an opposite veranda (the 
thought of how much pleasure I was able to give them 
will long console me), I fell at last to knocking with my 

69 




^=^1J ^ 



I ■§••1' I i';l n'!'* ''' ■ 



A KIT OF OLD AKCIIITECTURE IN THE FKENtll QUARTER 



knuckles, like a mendicant at a window. By-and-bv a 
maid let me in. 

"Oh, was that you making that funny noise i" the 
mistress of the house inquired. '' I've been listening to 
it for a long while, and could not imagine what it could 
be." 

With what pi'ide remained to me I modestly suggest- 
ed that I could not I'ing a bell when there was none to 
ring, as spirits do in table-rappers' closets. I added that 
I would give five dollars to the local blind asylum if any 
one could show me a bell anywhere on or around the 
front door. 

" Of course there isn't any,"" remarked the lady; ''in 
New Orleans we put the bell on the post of the front 
gate.'" 

How on earth — who could blame — but, as she re- 
marked, that is where they hide the front-door bells in 
New Orleans. 

Certainly a typical Chicago man would throw up his 

70 



hands in horror at the lamentable backwardness of the 
city, at the absence of most of the newfangled means for 
making modern lives automatic and mechanical. We 
who seek change in travel, and who are rested where 
others rest, love New Orleans all the better for its so- 
called faults. The chief beast of burden is the mule, ami 
they have the finest mules and the sorriest horses im- 
aginable. But the noted mule-cars of old, that used to 
creak and jolt and rattle and bump through the heart 
of town, have at last given place to age-end troUej^-cars. 




STREET IN THE OT.D FKKNCII qi'AHTKK, FROM TIIK IIOTRI, ROYA.I, 

ri 



r 



The electric lights are mounted on tall towers of iron 
lattice-work, just as the}^ were in Detroit the last time I 
was there, and as if the object of the people was to light 
the clouds rather than the cit_y. The milk- carts are 
worth going to see. They are httle two-wheelers, like 
our Xew York butcher-carts, and each one has in front 
two w-oroeous great cans bound with brass hoops that 
are as histrous as jewelry. Women drive many of these 
carts, but wlien they are managed by men they dart 
madly about, and accidents to them are frequent. A 
lady friend of mine who once failed to receive the day's 
milk went to the door next day to dismiss the offender. 
She came back almost in tears, for he appeared to her 
with his face peeled and one arm in a sling. "Par-r-r- 
don me," he said; *• ze "ole business h'all tip ovaire on 
de street." 

The hod - carriers tote the bricks on their heads, 
balancing heavy loads on cushions that ht upon 
their crowns. The dog - catchers go about snaring 
vagrant curs with slip -nooses at the end of short 
sticks. Tlien they pitch the dogs into strange barrel- 
like wagons. Such a row as a New Orleans cur 
sets u\) when he feels himself jerked up by a hind 
leii' ouffht to soften the hearts of the stones under 
their feet. It does bring the women out from the 
doors and windows of several blocks of houses. Men 
stand about selling alligators that they keep in bas- 
kets and cages, many of the beasts being too young 
to know that the proper thing for an alligator is to 
be sluggish and slow. In their ignorance they slap 
about and climb and snap with their jaws with the 
activity and malice of so many hornets. Women sell 
j)j'(//hie.s and pecan candy, of which we know noth- 
ing until we go there, and "oyster loaves" (adver- 
tised as •' family peace - makers : take one with you 




BAKKH S CAKT 



wlien you go home late'') are among the queer edibles 
of the place. I desired to taste one for the peace 
of mv curiosity, but I never found out where I could 
take or what 1 could do with a loaf of bread stuffed 
witli cooked oys- 
ters. Men make 
jewelry in the 
streets by curl- 
in o- o'old wire 
o o 

into the forms 
of the written 
names of wom- 
en, and these are 
w(^rn as breast- 
pins. Such arti- 
ficers know moi'e 
than wiser men ; 
for who would 
dream that wom- 
en would care to display their given names and pet 
names to the public in shining letters;! Bat the men 
were ke})t busy as long as I was there, and I saw 
a two- hundred -and -twenty -pound woman fasten the 
word " Birdie '' to the throat of her dress and walk 
proudly away. 

The law courts are in the ancient Spanisli government 
building, and, in keeping with that still impressive pile, 
the officials barricade the street in front with a chain 
drawn across it, to preserve quiet during the proceedings. 
Tlie police, who are few in number, for there is no hood- 
lum or ''gang" element of ruffians in the city, are dressed, 
like our New York firemen, in caps and coats with silver 
buttons. The lottery being legalized, tickets are openly 
displayed in the shop windows, and are sold on the side- 
walks by men, wcjuieii. and children. One store foi' the 



sale of these tickets bears such a legend as this on its 
sign: ''This is lucky Xumber Eleven. More winning 
tickets sold here than anywhere else in town.'' 

There was a drawing while I was in the city, and 
knowing that the lottery company was not to ask for a 
renewal of its privileges, and tiiat its power and the 
scenes and customs growing out of it were soon to be- 
come mere memories, I availed myself of the opportunity 
to witness its chief pul)lic operation and the historic 
characters wlio have been incUicetl by large salaries to 
figure for it. The drawing took place in a tlieatre called 
" the Academy of ]\[usic," at eleven o'clock in the morn- 
ing. The yellow gas-jets battled feebly with the day- 
light in the lobby into which the people were pressing 
without let or qualification. The theatre was two-thirds 
full at last. On the stage, set with a parlor scene, was 
a knot of men between two wheels. The wheel on the 
right was a band of silver, with sides of glass and with 
a door in the metal rim. A bushel of little black gutta- 
percha envelopes the size of dominoes had been pouretl 
into this wheel, and a white boy, blindfolded with a 
handkerchief, stood at the handle of the crank by which 
the wheel was turned. He had one arm in the door of 
the wheel, ami with the hand of the other arm was offer- 
ing a tiny envelope to General Beauregard — the last sur- 
viving: o-eneral who served on either side in our late war. 
A fine, most gentlemanly-looking man he was, with the 
features of a French courtiei', with snowy hair, a white 
mustache, a little goatee, and the pinkest skin a baby 
ever knew. He was faultlessly dressed. Across the 
stage, beside a very much larger wheel of jxirti-colored 
boards, sat Major-General Jubal A.Early — a- perfect 
type of the conventional figure of Father Time; tall, 
portly, stoop-shouldered, partly bald, and with a long, 
heavy white beard. He was dressed all in the color 

74 



of the uniform he distinguished by his valor as a sol- 
dier. Alas, for humau frailty ! These two heroes were 
said to receive $30,000 apiece each year for their duties 
performed at the monthly public drawings of the lottery. 

By each general stood a blind- 
folded boy, taking numbers out 
of the wheels and handing them 
to the o:enerals. From the big- 
wheel to Major-General Early 
came the numbers of the tick- 
ets ; from the little wheel to 
General Beauregard came the 
numbers of dollars that formed 
the prize each ticket had won. 
J)y each general stood a crier. 
Earl}^ read out, ''Twenty -one 
thousand one hundred and 
fifty - two "; and Beauregard, 
having shelled the gutta-percha 
case off a billet, read out, ''Two 
hundred dollars." Then the 
criers took the billets and cried 
the numbers, "' Twenty -one 
thousand one hundred and 
fifty -two" from one; "Tew 
hundred dollars " from the 
other, who, by-the-way, called 
out tew hundred dollars at least 
tew hundred times. But all 
the prizes were not of that 
amount. I chanced to hear 
the capital prize read out. 

•' Twenty-eight thousand four 
hundred and thirty-nine," said Early 
tliousand dollars." said Beauregard, 




V\.^- 



A NEW ORLEANS 
POLICEMAN 



Three hundred 



Tlie effect was startling; indeed, the startled senses 
refused to grasp the meaning of the words. The criers 
repeated the figures. The people in the theatre craned 
forward, a hundred pencils shot over pads or bits of 
]mper in men's and women's laps. Then a murmur of 
voices sounded all over the liouse. The routine on the 
stage was halted, for the criers took the two bits of 
paper to some clerks, who sat at tables in the farther 
jmrt of the stage, to allow them to verity the important 
figures. Then the routine began anew. The wheels 
were revolved every few minutes, and the rubber shells 
rattled around like coffee Ijeans in a roasting-cylinder. 
The boys took off their bandages, and other boys were 
blindfolded and put in their places. The criers were 
relieved by others, and General Beauregard at last 
grew tired, and went out for half an hour. Among 
others came two criers who kept their hats on. Think 
of it I There hats on, covered, in the })resence of the 
God of Chance! It was an offence aga.inst the unities; 
it was making light of the solemn mystery of luck. 
Every man who drew a blank that month owes those 
rowdies a kick. I Avondered whether such a thing- 
could have happened before the passage of the postal 
bill which took the cream off the Inisiness and the nerve 
out of the misguided men who had been pressing for 
a renewal of the lottery charter. 

They have a stranger thing than the lottery in 
New Orleans, and that is the word '' lagniappe." 
'' Take that for a lagniappe " (pronounced lanyap), 
says a storekeeper as he folds a pretty calendar into 
the bundle of stationery you have purchased. " AVhat 
are you going to give me for a lagniappe?" a child 
asks after ordering five cents' worth of candy. A 
lagniappe means something thrown in, something extra, 
something more than is paid for ; and lagniappes are 

76 



looked for in New Orleans by servants and children 
especially. The merchants g'ive something, if it is only 
a stick of candv or a shinino- 
trinket, and he who chooses 
such tilings wisely profits in an 
increased business. It is the 
thirteen of "a baker's dozen,"' 
the " this for good measure," 
which we are all more or less 
accustomed to. I read an un- 
likely story to account for it in 
one of 'the New ()rleans pa])ers, 
telHng how a grocer kept a long- 
ape that annoyed him by pilfer- 
ing, and how, when a child 
came to complain tliat he had 
not given good measure to her 
mother when she had bought 
butter that day, he threw the 
ape at the child, saying, " Here, 
take lagniapjie [long ape], and 
be off with you.'' I asked many 
of the moi'e intelligent men of 
the town, but not one who coukl 
give me the derivation of the 
word, the custom itself being- 
familiar as humanity, though 
seldom practised so generally 
in a large city. 

The second - hand shops in 
Kew Orleans, taken tooreth- 

er, equal a great museum. Strangers hang around them 
like moths near candle-lights, for in the city are many 
old families that are obliged to part with heirlooms one 
by one, or that cease to value them, and })rcfer newer 

77 




VENDER OF LOTTERY 
TICKETS 



things. Here, then, one ma\' buy whole sets of solid 
Empire and Directoire furniture and furnishings — clocks, 
candle-glasses, china, cut glass, andirons, tongs, snuffers, 
four-post canopied bedsteads, and no one knows what 
all. 




TYPES OF THE DAGO 



I find that, in the space of a chapter, there is not room 
to do justice to half of what is noteworthy in New Or- 
leans. I had hoped to tell of the ])icturesque Italians, 
their occupations, their fleet of luggers, and their stand- 
ing in the community since " the Mafiia affair." I meant 
to describe the charming resorts and the beauties of the 
pinv-woods regions, the Bayou Teche country, and the 
shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The delicious cooking 
and notable dishes peculiar to the place were in my 
mind when I began this chapter, and — though I had 
meant to confine myself to what others had not dwelt 
strongl}^ upon — the educational institutions, the promise 
of a strong art atmosphere, and even the notable ath- 
letic, g3aiinastic, and yachting clubs deserved description. 
The excellent sport Avith rod and gun afforded in the 
neighborhood of the city also interested me; but I must 

78 



leave the field to others, and turn to a study of the com- 
mercial interests of the enterprising city. 

Over fifty per cent, of the active business men of the 
city are from the Nortli and West, and the worlv of so- 
called reconstruction is jxirtly in tlie hands of nature 
by means of internuirria.ge and ])artly left to business 
in the forming of commercial ])artnerships. I did not 
happen to meet a single " hostile " there. I met only 
one in the course of my entire journey from St. Louis to 
Florida and home again. I sympathized with that one 
because she was an aristocratic old lady of nearly eighty 
years, who had been locked up in a jail for ten days for 
refusinii' to salute the soldiers who had seized her man- 
sion for their headquarters. 1 was told in New Orleans 
that there are a few unreconstructed men there; but no 
one heeds them, and they are such only because in no 
other way than by startling and loud talking would 




DAGOS ANH TirKIll BOATS 
79 



they be able to attract attention to themselves. On the 
contrary, the warmest patriotism prevails, even among 
the wrecks and ruins of fortunes and of futures which 
have turned thousands of lives into the next thing to 
trairedies. Xorthern men are made welcome there, and 
so heartily that in one of the leading clubs heretofore 
sustained by the native leaders of the people two of tiie 
three members elected as the executive committee are 
men from the North. 

It must be remembered that, in a great measure, the 
original business men of the city were Northerners and 
foreijiuers, the natives in ante-war days having been 
hmd-owners, plantei's, and clerks. Now, as I say, the 
Northern men are in the majority in trade. They tell 
me, what I heard everywhere in the South, that the 
])ros])erity of that most attractive section of our land 
will be permanently assured when cotton is grown only 
as a sui'plus crop or by-product. The ])lanter will then 
be able to sell cotton for two cents a pound, but will be 
in a position to demand twelve cents. 

New (Jrleans, from a commercial point of view, is 
new-born, or, at least, she is but newly recovering the 
relation to our great country of the present time Avhich 
she bore to the smaller one of ante-helhim days. The 
constant dread of fever retarded her progress, or she 
might now have been one of the very great cities of the 
world. Now nearly two decades have passed without a 
visit from yellow fever, and it has become evident not 
only that this dread disease is an exotic, but that the city 
is in other respects a safe and pleasant place of residence. 

It has a fresh-water harbor, with a permanent twenty- 
six foot channel, and solid, unchanging banks for build- 
in os. Its inland waterwavs lead to the iron region of 
Pennsylvania, the lead mines of Missouri, and the cop- 
per region of Michigan. It is the seaport terminus of 

80 



several great trunk railway lines, and the sup[)ly depot 
for Texas, the Southwest, Mexico, and Central Amer- 
ica. It commands 1500 miles of seaboard, and its mer- 
chants assert that the internal waterways behind it, which 
are navigable or can be made so, reach 18,000 miles. 

The building up of 
populations in Texas 
and the Southwest, a 
region tliat is grow- 
ing like a bed of weeds, 
is helping New Orleans 
as its natural depot of 
supplies. INIexico, the 
Central American 
states, and the countrv 
along the Southern 
Pacific system to Cal- 
ifornia, are but slightly 
less tributary to it. 
The inlantl water sys- 
tem terminating at 
Xew Orleans affects a 
re^'ion extending be- 
yond K a n s a s City. 
Chicago, St. Paul, St. 
Louis, and other West- 
ern cities now import 
through Xew Orleans, 

which is thus put in direct competition with New York 
for the foreign business with onr West. The actual 
traffic on the Mississippi River and- its tributaries is 
relatively small, yet it establishes low freight rates by 
land and water, and the more the river is improved the 
cheaper will be the transportation of all bulky and non- 
perishable freights. 

F 81 




Till': OLD AND THE NEW SOUTH 



Business in New Orleans is on a very solid and con- 
servative basis. With cotton grown at a loss there have 
been practically no failures — that is to say, there has 
been no increase of failures. The main trouble has been 
that the capital at hand has been insufficient for the 
development of industries. The capital, surplus, and de- 
posits of the New Orleans banks is about $33,000,000, 
and this is relied upon for the handling of from two 
hundred to three hundred millions of dollars' worth of 
crops every year. 

The importation of fruit through New Orleans is a 
very heavy interest. Only a few 3"ears ago the city 
was behind New York in the volume of its banana im- 
ports, and the receipts of other tropical fruits were 
small, but during the year ending in the sjiring of 1892 
that city led all the rest in the banana business, beating- 
New York by nearly 170,000 bunches. The trade is 
only ten years old, but now employs several lines of 
steamers, bringing from three to live cargoes a week. 
During 1891, in addition to an enormous mass of cocoa- 
nuts and other fruits, 3,735,481 bunches of bananas were 
unladen there. The reasons for this development are 
obvious. The run from the fruit lands to New Orleans 
is a short one, and is made in vessels especially fitted 
for the trade. The climate of the city insures the fruit 
against cold that would be injurious to it during its 
transshipment to the cars, and these cars, built espe- 
cially for the trade and run on express time, cpdckly 
distrilmte it among all the centres of population in 
the West. The direct importation of fruits from the 
Mediterranean shores is also growing into a consider- 
able business, which owes its increase to the constantly 
multiplying number of vessels that come to New Or- 
leans to get wheat, cotton, and other return cargoes. 
The swift steamers in the Central American fruit trade 



carry back American products, and this business is 
seen to be growing under our reciprocity treaties, 
which thus operate to give i^ew Orleans a share of 
this trade, that, but for 
the fruit business, she 
never would have had. 

The transshipment of 
■wheat from cars and Mis- 
sissippi barges to steam- 
ers for abroad is a tre- 
mendous industry that 
liad grown up within a 
year of the time when 
i was there (March, 1802). 
It is a consequence of 
the immense crops, of the 
inability of the Atlantic 
coast ports to handle 
them, and of the fact 
tliat a large number of 
European vessels come 
to Xew Orleans, either 
with cargoes or in bal- 
last, from other ports to 
which they have taken 
cargoes. The wheat 
reaches this port by way 
of the Illinois Central, 
Mississippi Valley, and 
Texas Pacific railroads, 

anil by the Mississippi Barge Company. The Missis- 
sippi Valley Railroad Comjmny has an elevator that 
is small, but handled three millions of bushels of wheat 
and corn between September, 1891, and April, 1892. 
Another and larger elevator and a line of ti'ansatlantic 

m 




A RELIC OF THE "OLD SOUTH 



steamers were contracted lor by this company at that 
time. The Texas Pacitic road was, at the same period, 
building an elevator with 35O,{)00 bushels ca})acity. 
The elevator capacity of the port has alone set a limit 
upon the volume of this business that can be got, and 
it is evident that the railroads do not mean to stand in 
their own way in this res})ect. The exportation of 
flour had also been very considerable within the year 
which closed while I was there. Tliis trade is due to 
our reciprocal tariff arrangements with Cuba and the 
South and Central American nations. As it is, the city 
does not yet include a flouring- mill, and that staple 
comes from Missouri and Kansas, always in bags, to 
meet the demand of the Latin countries. Floui', agri- 
cultural implements, beeves, mules, and horses are now 
articles of large export to tliose lands. 

The manufacture of fertilizers is an important indus- 
try. Pebble phosphates from Florida are manufactured 
into marketable ])hosphate, but there are other fertilizer 
companies using potash, cotton-seed meal, and phosphate 
to make a product that is used on the cotton and sugar 
plantations. It is interesting to tintl that one staple of 
the South thus depends upon the other, for cott(jn-seed 
meal is extensively used to enrich the sugar lands. About 
10,000 tons of this one product are taken off the land in 
one set of places to be put upon it in another. In all, 
15,000 tons of fertilizers for the cotton, sugar, and rice 
plantations are annually made and sold in New Orleans. 
But at the same time that cotton thus helps sugar, 
it is in anotiier way benelited, in turn, by sugar. 
The sugar is put up in sacks and bags made of cotton 
cloth. A very large l)usiness in cotton and burlap 
sacks has grown out of the sugar - refining in New 
Orleans. The Western people, among whom this sugar 
finds its consumers, prefer lOO-pound sacks to barrels. 

84 



The sacks are easier to handle, since they must be 
carried on the backs of mules and men ; and then, again, 
the sacks are more useful after the sugar is used than 
barrels would be. 

The retinino- of su^'ar is a notable industry in Tsew 




vfl 



COIiNKK OF BANK BTII.DING 

Orleans. There are four re- 
fineries in and out of the 
great sugar combination, and 
all are ke]it running by night 
and by day. This product 
is made of Louisiana and West Indian crude sugar, 
and is marketed at home and in the West and Noi'th- 
west. The business is increasing so ra:))idly as to 
lead serious men to predict that in time New Orleans 
will supply the entire country between the Kockies 
and the Mississippi. 

85 



A side industrv of the Southern (cotton -seed) Oil 
Company is the fattening of two and three year old 
cattle from Texas on cotton -seed hulls and meal. This 
results in considerable shij)ments of cattle to Liverpool 
and to the stock-yards of the West, and is so simple and 
profitable an industry that, in view of the quantity of 
such food which is obtainable, it would seem bound to 
grow. Cotton-seed oil-cake is a large item of the export 
business. It goes to England, Scotland, and German3% 
to be used in the feeding of cattle. New Orleans is the 
birthplace ot" tiie now great cotton-seed oil in(lustr3\ It 
has live or six mills, some that are in the trust and some 
that are inde})endent, and the seed is brought from 
Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and the Missis- 
sippi Valley. 

The cotton -pressing industry is extensive enough to 
have tempted English capital, which was offered for the 
control of it while I was there. It is one of the largest 
businesses and fields for labor in the city. The cotton is 
brouglit to town by rail and boat. It is then classed, 
graded, and stored, and when sold is rechissed, weighed, 
and compressed for shipment. The ])roportion of the 
cost of a bale of cotton which is paid for tlie ]Vew Oi-- 
leans labor is so large as to amount to the lion's share, I 
was told. 

The unique position of the city as the point of export 
for the cotton crop is well understood, and I need not 
enlarge u])on the subject. In 1891 there was handled 
at that port more cotton than was handled there in 
any year except 1800, the net receipts being t^,27O,10o 
bales, exclusive of receipts from or cid other seaboard 
cities. 

NeAV Orleans has two hum' cotton mills, making 
brown e^oods, sheetinsrs, shirting-s, unbleached and col- 
ored goods, and hosiery and other yarns. One mill 

86 



runs -15,000 spindles, and the other 1C,000. The city 
also has a very large brewing interest, maintaining 
fourteen large breweries, and suppl^'ing not only the 
city and surrounding counti-y, but a heavy demand 
from Central and South America. 

Four large cigar and cigarette factories employ 2500 




ALONG THE LEVEE 



hands. The tobacco in use is obtained from Cuba, Mex- 
ico, and Sumatra, and from Connecticut, Florida, and 
"Wisconsin. The cigars and cigarettes are sold largely 
in Texas and California, but find a strong market in 
Chicago, and, to a less extent, in New York and Phila- 
delphia. One house turns out 36,000,000 of cigars a 
year, and the total output of all the factories is 54,000,- 
000 cigars a year. One hundred and fifty millions of 
cigarettes are made there annually. The output of 
manufactured tobaccos is small. 

87 



No foreign ice now goes to New Orleans. Tiie eight 
or ten large factories, rnn with the ammonia process, 
supply a great section of countrj^ around the Louisiana 
metropolis, going to tiie cities and small towns far out 
on the railroads. Mississippi River water, filtered, is 
that which is used. This making of artificial ice was 
begun ten or twelve years ago, but has greatly increased 
in the last half-dozen years. The people there used to 
pay $14 and $15 a ton for ice, but it is now sold for $5 
or $(3 a ton. 

Another industry that has grown amazingly in the 
last three to five years is the manufacture of ready- 
made clothing. The city has an advantage over its 
competitors in being able to draw upon an extra-intelli- 
gent class of workers on these goods — the Creoles and 
the more intelligent and industrious negroes. Many 
of these, especially the Creoles, will not work in fac- 
tories, but perform the labor at Injnie, and do much 
better work for less money than can be obtained in 
the North. New Oi'leans supplies the ISouth and South- 
west, and is even begmning to ship clothing to the 
North. 

All the rough rice raised in Louisiana is milled in 
New Orleans in twelve or fifteen mills. A trust has 
been organized there, and has taken in most of these es- 
tablishments. The rice is of a high grade, and is sold 
all over the country. There is a small but swelling busi- 
ness in the making of boots and shoes. The fisheries 
employ 2000 men, the oyster business 3000 men, and 
the catching and canning of shrimps almost 1000 
men. There are more than sixty firms handling- 
Spanish moss, which is used in mattresses and up- 
holstering woi'k. 

Olive oil is being made in New Orleans from the fruit 
of an olive orchard in Mississippi, eighty-four miles from 

88 



the citv. This is thoiio'ht to be the bes'iniiin"" of a 
future industry of great extent. It is ten years since 
olives were tirst phmted by the present experimenter, 
and he has found that the trees will bear all over south- 
ern Louisiana, and that frosts wliich will destroy oranges 
will not harm this fruit. This gentleman, one of the 
shrewdest business men in tiie city, now has 1500 trees, 
whose fruit he last season pressed into oil. The trees 
will bear in five years after they are planted. The fruit 
ripens in August and September, and the crop is thus 
ready for picking three to five months before olives are 
gathered in southern P]uro])e. The fresh American oil 
will have that advantage over the European oil, l)esides 
the saving of freight and the customs tax. The Ameri- 
can trees are seen to be prolific bearers, and the fruit is 
of a large size, and of a qualitj'^ to compete with any in 
the world. This gentleman says that the soil of the en- 
tire Gulf coast from Florida to Texas is suitable for the 
cultivation of olives. 

Louisiana exempts from license and taxation all es- 
tablishments employing not less than live hands in the 
manufacture of textile fabrics, leather, shoes, harness, 
saddlery, hats, flour, machinery, fertilizers, and chem- 
icals, furniture and all articles of wood, marble 
and stone, soaj), stationery, ink and paper, boats, and 
chocolate. 

They say in New Orleans that the mortality among 
the colored residents is so much greater than among the 
same proportion of whites that the published death- 
tables do not faii'ly re])resent the character of the city 
as a place of residence for the last-named race. I cut 
from the J^tcai/ane the death-table for the second week 
in March, 1892, and found that the deaths among the 
whites numbered TU, or 22.33 per loOO per annum, while 
of negroes QQ died, or 49.55 per lOOO per annum. Of 

89 



the causes, phthisis ])uhiionahs and pneumonia led the 
hst. 

The signal - service records yield this account of the 
temperature of the seasons : 





Temperature— de 


g. P'ahr. 


s 


•s . 


> 1 










Season. 


Id 


s 

a = 


cS S 


























S >•■ 


**. G 


£ 1 








z - 




£ 


'^ 


Ch 


1-^ 


Winter. . . 


56 


63 


49 


13.09 


47 


71 


Spi'ins:. . . 


69 


77 


62 


13.67 


53 


70 


Summer.. 


81 


88 


76 


17.97 


54 


73 


Autumn.. 


70 


76 


62 


11.94 


58 


72 



90 



Ill 

ALONG THE BAYOU TECHE 

Mr. Horace Fletcher, of Xew Orleans, has an irre- 
sistible wa}^ wliicli perhaps he caught from the general 
irresistibleness of all New Orleans, though it is more 
likely that it was born with him in Massachusetts. At 
all events, when he said to Mr. Smedley, the artist, and 
myself that no one could pretend to have seen New Or- 
leans until he had also seen the Teche or Acadian region, 
he said it in such a way that it was difficult to wait 
from Saturday until Tuesday for the steamboat -^ a 
steamboat, by-the-way, which has its name painted u\) 
in its cabin, with a stove-pipe in front of the letter " c," 
so that its passengers cannot hel[) but read the name 
" Te — he," and feel sure that they are bound upon a 
very merry boat, and certain of a jolly time. The Tcr/te 
and her sister boats go into the 'Cajun (Acadian) coun- 
try in the old way. the way of befo' de wa' and befo' de 
railroads, taking a journey of hundreds of miles to fetch 
them where the cars go in less than a hundred ; taking- 
days where the cars take hours. 

The course is by two loops whose sides are nearly 
parallel. One is made by going up the Mississippi untd 
the mouth of the E,ed River is reached, then down the 
Atchafahiya towards New Orleans again, and then up 
the Teche away from New Orleans and almost parallel 
with the route up the Father of Waters. The three 
lines of waterway are so nearly beside one another that 

91 



points iqx)!! tliein whicli are actiiall3^ close together by 
wagon road are great distances apart by the boat jour- 
ney ; for instance, one ]ilace wliich is forty -four miles 
from another as the crow Hies is 376 miles from it by 
the boat route. 

'' Take your roughening with you," said the captain, 
''for we do not sell anything to drink on the boat." 
Ml'. Fletcher does nothing by halves, so that along with 
a little " rouo-henino-" he took a case of mineral water, 
a mule- load of bananas to be fried in crumbs by the 
dai'ky cooks, and the current copies of narp<i''s Weeki;/ 
and of I*uck and Life. We had a dismal, cold, rainy 
day to start with, and no ladies aboard. The men 
huddled around the stove at the masculine end of the 
saloon, and smoked and swapped stories. It was a ])er- 
fect reproduction of a day in a cross-roads tavern, such 
as every man who follows a gun or a rod and has been 
storm-stayed in the country has experienced. The red- 
hot stove, the circle of men, the wind scolding at the 
windows and thi-ashing them with rain, the door oi)en- 
ing to allow some one to be shot in with a blast of 
chilling air, like a projectile out of a ])neumatic gun, 
the weary and worn old newspapers, the gradual torpor 
that the heat produced among the men — nothing was 
lacking. In the evening, after supper, we heard sul)- 
dued music working a difficult way tlirough a stateroom 
door. 

Music! It was inspiration! It was precisely what 
w^as wanted to atone for the beastly weather and the 
imprisonment in -doors. I knocked on the state-room 
door, and found that the musician was the mulatto 
"• Texas-tender," which is to say the man in charge of 
the rooms of the })ilots and petty officers on top of the 
saloon roof. Would he stop hiding his melody under a 
bushel and come out and play for us ? "• Certainly, sah, 

92 




•'take YOtIR HOlKillKMXC WITH YOU," SAID THE CAPTAIN 



if dat wuz what we wished." So he came out, appear- 
ing to us with a guitar in one hand and the upper part 
of liis bod}^ enmeshed in a strange arrangement of 
heavy wire that w^ent around each upper arm and 
across his chest and up to bis moutb, where it was solid 
and blaclv like a gag. He looked as if be was pinioned 
and gagged and walking out to a gallows to be hanged 
with a guitar in his hand. Perhaps that was what 
would happen to him if he played in a centre of civili- 
zation, but we were resolved to be tolerant, though 
critical. He sat in a chair, and lo I the " strange device " 
of wire proved to be a patent concertina-holder, The 
o-ao- was the concertina. For an hour he ])layed for us, 
very much to our satisfaction, though there were feat- 
ures of dear old "Annie Eooney " that we did not rec- 
oD-nize, and " Comrades " became a trifle quarrelsome 
and discordant at times. We asked the captain if there 
were no negroes in the crew who could sing or dance. 

''I don't know," said he. "They are all in the St. 
Charles now." , 

"The St. Charles r' 

"Oh," said the captain, "you don't understand. 
That is what we call the place where tlie roustabouts 
sleep, on the main-deck under the boilers." 

In the morning the light broke upon a wet and de- 
pressing scene. The broad yellow river, so glorious in 
sunlight, was a hurrying sheet of mud enclosed between 
lines of dripping willows and mounds of w^et Cherokee 
rose-bushes not in bloom. The great reaches of the 
levees more than ever suggested earth - work fortifica- 
tions against the forces of Neptune. The sk}^ was dark 
and cheerless. Of signs of population there would be 
none for miles, and then we would see scores of negro 
cabins, and close by the usually white mansion of their 
white employer. The smoke-stacks of an occasional 

94 



4\ 




^bSI ' 



f> 






S /- 



sugar- re tineiy rising above the trees told us that we 
were in the sugar country, but rice phmtations were 
plentiful. ISTow and then a vagabond house-boat was 
seen, nose up on the bank, or drifting down with the 
current. Usually the after -part of such an ark was 
covered over by a projection of the roof of the house, 
and in that shelter we nearly always discovered the 
shiftless proprietor, fishing or mending his lines or 
whittling, or, more often than anything else, smoking 
and lettino- his mind take a vacation. AVe heard much 
that was interesting about these and other Soutliern 
craft from tlie pilots and the captain. 

The house- boats, it appears, are a survival of one 
among many kinds of boats whicii were very much 
more numerous ujion the great river before the era of 
steam navigation than steamboats are now. Among 
the earlier forms of boats were the famous "Kentucky 
flats," or '' broad-horns," and family boats of this pat- 
tern were an early modification, of their general plan, 
which was that of a strong-hulled ark, long and narrow, 
and covered with a curving roof. I have read that 
" family boats of this description fitted up for the descent 
of families to the lower country, were provided with a 
stove, a comfortable apartment, beds, and arrangements 
for commodious habitancy, and in them ladies, servants, 
cattle, sheep, dogs, and poultry, all floating on the same 
bottom, and on the roof the looms, ploughs, spinning- 
wheels, and domestic implements of the familv, were 
carried down the river." Fulton's Clermont^ which 
proved its usefulness as the flrst practicable adaptation 
of steam-power to water travel in ISOT, must have been 
(|uickly copied on the Mississippi, for in one list of not- 
able passages up that river I have seen a note of a trip 
by a steamboat in ISl-i. But long after that the 
barges, skifl's, horse-boats, broad-horns, and family boats 

96 



iiuist have remained very numerous. They floated down 
stream with the current, and were pulled up again by 
means of wheels worked by horses oi' cattle, and by the 
toilsome and slow processes known as warping and bush- 
whacking. A boat which was warped up the j'iver kept 
two row-boats ahead of her, carrying hawsers, which 
were made fast to the trees on the shore, and then 
pulled in as the bigger vessels were thus hauled along. 
When the length of one cable had been pulled in, the 
other boat had fastened the other cable far ahead, antl 
so the vessel ''inched''' along against the live-mile cur- 
rent of the stream a little more Cjuickly than a house 
moves when its owner has decided to move it down a 
country road to a distant cellar lie has dug for it. It 
took a day to go six or eight miles by that method. 
Smaller boats were propelled against the current by 
rowing, sailing, or poling them along ; and when the 
water w^as high and overflowed the banks, they bush- 
whacked up stream — that is, they pulled the vessels 
along by hauling on the bushes tliat brushed the sides 
of the craft. 

At last came the Mississippi steamboats, those queer 
creations which seem to l)e made b}' house-carpenters 
who have forgotten how to build houses, and vet never 
knew the ship- joiner's art. They are huge, flat - bot- 
tomed, frail houses floated on box-like hulls, but they 
are as comfortable as the Southern barons demanded 
that they should be in the glorious days wlien they rev- 
elled like kings. We cannot tell what sort of boats will 
travel the great river in the surely coming day when it 
shall be all walled in and kept in its place, but it is no 
more likely that the railroads will crush out passenger 
travel on that majestic and interesting river than that 
they will upon the Thames or the Hudson. Just now 
there is a spell upon the traffic. The war interrupted 
G 97 



it, and the people of the North and East must redis- 
cover the fact that the journey from St. Paul or St. 
Louis is one of the greatest delights and wonders of 
our continent. However, Mississippi steamboating has 
stood still for more than twenty years. The rocket of 
its glory burst with the famous Lee and Natchez race 
in 1870. They still talk of that world-famous brush in 
the river pilot-houses, and I heard it referred to more 
than once during the nine or ten days I spent u])on the 
river. One of the captains in that test of speed, his- 
toric old Captain Leathers, who commanded the Natches, 
is still in the service, though he has a son who is a man 
beyond the age of thirty, and in command of a boat 
unkindly named the Natchez^ after the famous racer the 
old man captained years ago. The talk of record-break- 
iugs and of quick runs is all of what we in New York 
would call long voyages, since these consume the time 
of ocean journeys, and our longest steamboat trips are 
to Albany and Fall River, and are accomplished in a 
night. 

The 'quickest run from New Orleans to Cincinnati, 
made by the R. R. Springer in 18sl, was done in 5 
days, 12 hours, and 45 minutes. The fastest time over 
the course of 1013 miles from the Crescent City to 
Cairo, Illinois, was that made by the R. E. Lee in 1870, 
in 3 days and 61 minutes, and was therefore run at the 
rate of about 14 miles an hour — against the current, 
to be sure. The Lee, the competitor of the JVatcZ/ez, 
reached Natchez, during their memorable race, in If! 
hours, 36 minutes, and 47 seconds, making the distance 
of 272 miles at the speed of about 16^ miles an hour. 
Tiie speed per hour during the whole race of 1278 miles 
to St. Louis ligures at about 13|^ miles. 

The race took place in the summer of 1870. Captain 
Leathers with the Nutchez completed a run to St. Louis 




'CAJUNS 



in 3 daj's, 21 hours, and 58 minutes, and Captain Can- 
non, of the other and rival king-boat on the river, the 
H. E. Lee, at once announced his intention to beat her 
on the return trip. The JVatcItes returned to New Or- 
leans in due time, and her captain found that the Zee 
Avas going to refuse all freight and passengers during 
the race. More than that, the Lee had taken out all her 
light upper work that could be removed, in order to 
lessen her drauglit in the water. Captain Leathers of 
the NdtcJiez affected not to need such advantages. He 
took aboard a small cargo of freight and some passen- 
gers, and the two miglity packets were cast loose from 
the New Orleans levee on June 30, IsTO. Awa}" they 
went, with their huo-e white bodies throbbino- and their 
trails of jet smoke curling behind them. The L.ee made 
no landings for coal. She had engaged a tender to pre- 
cede her 100 miles up the river to give her a sup})ly of 
whatever fuel she needed. Farther along, tlat-l)oats 
with wood and coal awaited her in mid-stream. The\" 
were warped to her as she slowed up alongside of them, 
were emptied as she swept them along, and then were 
flung otf to drift where they might after they had 
served their purpose. The JVatc/tes copied this method 
after a time. 

The race made a wonderful stir. Boats loaded with 
spectators preceded and tried to accompany the racers 
from New Orleans, and everywhere along the river it 
was said to seem as if the interior had been depopulated, 
so numerous were the persons who crowded the shores 
to look on. The Lee was luck}^ and made the trip in 3 
days, 18 hours, and l-t minutes, arriving in St. Louis 
when thirty thousand persons were assembled on the 
levee and on the house-tops to cheer her. The JVatehez 
had met with unusual detentions b\^ fog and ground- 
ings. Tlie time of the boats as they reached each prin- 

luo 



cipal city on the way was cabled to Europe, and it was 
estimated that a million of dollars was wag'ered on the 
race. 

^ Thus, with talk of the historic and picturesque past, 
surrounded by what might be called " the local color," 
we drove the wretched weather out of mind until we 
reached a watery corner and turned ont of the mighty 
river into the Atchafalaya. This we called the '' Chaff- 
erlyer," to be in harmony with our acquaintances. It 
is fed out of the Mississippi where the Red River joins 
the Father of Waters, and immediately that we entered 
it a new scene was presented — a view of a narrow 
st]"eani between groves which grow not merely to the 
water s edge, but into the water. It does not look like 
any river that we know in the North ; it is rather like 
water running through woods, as a flood might appear, 
or a greatly swollen stream. Suddenly what is called 
the Grand pours into it, but the Grand is merely a 
wider belt of liquid mud flowing through a wilderness. 
Xext the land begins to rise, higher banks are formed, 
and with these come views of cottages, freight-houses, 
ruins of old brick sugar-mills, fishermen's tents, negro 
cabins, bits of greensward, banks of rose-bushes, and 
patches of cultivated farm land. Our first stop was at 
a honey plantation, where the half-acre lot filled with 
beehives, novel as the sight ])roved, was not as peculiar 
as the honey-planter himself. He is famous up and 
down the Teche route as a man who so loves to argue 
that nothing- can jiossibly hai)pen which will not arouse 
his instinct for ilebate. lie has some little learning, 
and even in his worn old suit of homespun suggested 
traces of gentle blood and breeding as he stood on the 
river-bank flino-ing' long sentences and uncommon words 
up at our captain on the main-deck, while his daughter, 
the only other white person for miles around, h>ancd her 

101 



spare form against the side of the cabin doorway, and 
smiled with affectionate pride as she reflected upon the 
good time her father was having with his vocal organs. 
Something which had been ordered by him from New 
Orleans had not come, and he was begging leave to 
differ with the captain, no matter how the captain sought 
to account for the delay. I think I remember that the 
sum of this man's income each year was computed at 
five hundred dollars, which proved, it seemed, that he 
was in very comfortable circumstances, could well afford 
to go to New Orleans twice a year, and was able to 
support the position of a man of consequence in that 
region. 

Presently we saw our first Acadians — nowhere spoken 
of in their own country otherwise than as 'Cajuns. The 
first one on the ronte keeps a low gin-mill, a resort for 
bad characters. The next one we saw was a swarthy, 
stalwart man with a goatee d la Napoleon III., who was 
catching bait with a net. Moss hangs from the cypress 
and oaks in great and sad profusion in this part of the 
route. The wilderness is only occasionally broken by a 
clearing, and after each interruption it seems to snap 
shut again as if not even man could overcome the force 
of the rank growth of vegetation, except here and there, 
and for a mere geographical instant. There was a fuzz 
of disappointingly small scrub palmettoes on the ground, 
and Avherever there was a cabin or a man there was also 
a dugout canoe or pirogue. These boats were not such 
as men have made in almost every known part of the 
world by merely scooping out the heart of a log and 
fasliioning its ends. They w^ere the lightest and pret- 
tiest boats of the kind I ever saw, mere shells or dishes, 
very skilfully and gracefully modelled, but so shallow as 
to be likened to nothing so closely as to half a pea-pod. 
Bait-catching was the business carried on with them. 

102 



The men were after shrimp, but very often canght craw- 
fish, those relentless allies of the Mississippi River which 
eat into the levees and let the river through behind 
them. They are a tenth the size of lobsters, and look 
like lobsters " out of drawing," as the artists would say 
— that is, they a]")pear disproportioned, with their tails 
too small for their bodies. They are red and greenish- 
red, but some are as rosy as one of the old masters is 
said to have painted lob- 
sters in the sea after he ^' ^ - 
had become acquainted 
with them on the tlinner- 
table. They have blue lob- 
ster eyes and fierce claws. 

In time we came to the 
mouth of a bayou which 
was closed during the war, 
but which, were it opened, 
would take us to Plaque- 
mine, twenty five miles 
across a country ai'ound 
which we had gone lUO 
miles to get where we 
were. Farther on Ave 
came to the openings into 
two or three other bayous, 

and thus gradually were brought to realize that this 
region of the mouths of the Mississippi is a land 
that is nine - tenths covered with water. Travellers by 
the cars do not comprehend the character of Louisiana, 
or see, with anything like the vievv of a steamboat 
passenger, with what profusion the surface of the earth 
is littered with bayous, branches, canals, ditches, lakes, 
and swamps. Lake Chico was a notable incident of 
this second day's progress. It is merel}^ a swelling 

io;5 







of the Atchafalaya or Grand into a sheet of yelk^w 
water thirty miles long and twelve miles wide. It is 
picturesquely littered with snags and floating logs and 
channel stakes. The narrow entrance to it, where 
wooded promontories all but block the way, is much 
admired by persons afflicted with the fever for kodaking 
everything out-of-doors. The Spanish-moss is so abun- 
dant there that if I w^ere a sufferer from the epidemic I 
would have been tempted to photograph some of the 
trees that carried the greatest burdens of the weed, and 
looked as if they had been washing out their worn and 
faded winter garments and were hanging them up to 
dry. But a far better picture would be one tliat showed 
how we felt our way into the lake, being so uncertain 
whether there was sufficient water that we wedded our 
steamboat to a great scow with ropes, gave our spouse 
the task of carrying a good part of our load of freight, 
and sent a mate ahead of us in a small boat to prod the 
mud with a pole. Whatever the mate discovered he 
discreetly kept to himself ; ijut we. not to be retarded 
by his reticence, posted a darky on the upper deck 
with a sounding -line to chant in the musical lino-o 
cf the Southern pilots the varying but always very 
small distance between our keel and the muddy lake 
bottom. 

Our first notable stop occurred a little after dusk, at 
Pattersonville, where we went ashore for a cake of 
shaving-soap, and saw vaguely by the yellow light of a 
few scattered kerosene lamps that we were the only 
souls adrift in a long wide street, which boasted here and 
there a dwelling and hei-e and there a neglected shop. 
We asked for the soap in one store, and the clerk treat- 
ed us to a Southern expression that we had not yet 
heard upon its native soil. " I'm sorry, sah," said he, 
'* but I've done run plumb out of it.'" We added that 

1U4 



to our notes. "We had grown quite used to hearing size 
and distance expressed with the phrases, '' A right smart 
of a plantation," " a smart distance," or " a right smart 
hotel " ; also to hearing every one say, " Where is he 
at now^ r' and " I dun'no' where I left ray hat at." 
When night fell, thick and black, our two powerful 
electric search-lights were utilized with weird and the- 





FELLOW-PASSENGERS 



atrical effect to throw great shafts of daylight at which- 
ever bank we were searching for a landino-. Each lio-ht 
cut a well-defined path through the night, and when it 
picked out a grove of trees or a clutter of negro cabins 
or a landing, it created a veritable stage-picture. These 
lamps bothered the pilots so much in steering their way 
through the water that they were only lighted for view- 
ing the bank, and for helping the roustabouts to see 
while loading and unloading the cargo. The ])ilots so 
quickly shut off the light when they had nothing to do 

105 



but to pick out an uncertain course, through water and 
air that were equally black, that they seemed to me like 
water-cats that could see very well in their element, but 
were helpless upon land. 

Tn the morning, after many hours spent in throwing 
spectacular landings on the blank wall of night, and 
then carrying freight out to them, and wiping them out 
of existence by turning off our lights, we awoke to find 
the Atchafalaya basking in the sun and in quite another 
country. We had travelled from the swamps and cy- 
press brakes of Louisiana to something like the Thames 
in England — to a pastoral country watered by a narrow, 
pretty river of clear water that loafed along between 
patches of greensward, rows of oaks, white manor- 
houses, cabins set among roses, magnolias, and jasmines, 
and with great clearings, and men at work ploughing 
on either side. White bridges that invariably broke 
apart as the boat approached them, and that were often 
set upon pontoons, still further domesticated and civil- 
ized the scenery. Ever}'^ plantation had a bridge for 
itself, it seemed. It was a little jarring to have a man 
come aboard with two rattlesnake- skins, each large 
enough to make into two pairs of Chicago slippers; 
five inches wide and a yard in length the skins were. 
We had pointed out to us the Calumet Plantation, 
which is said to be the most orderly and completel}^ 
appointed sugar farm in Louisiana. The rows of white- 
washed negro cabins were formed of houses better than 
the 'Cajun houses we had been seeing. 

Daniel Thompson is the planter here, and his son, Mr. 
Wibrey Thompson, came aboard and talked very inter- 
estingly of the experiments he and his father are mak- 
ing in the analyses of many sorts of cane, the breeding 
of the best varieties, the perfecting of refining processes, 
and the broadcast publication of the results of the work 

106 



i I 




-:X 



m ^ jf 




in the laboratories, where as many as three chemists 
ai'e sometimes at work together. Such men are the rep- 
resentatives of the new type of farmers who are numer- 
ous in the West and wiio are multiplying in the South. 
They do not farm by prayer, or take land on shares 
with luck or nature, after the old plan. Chemistry is 
their handmaiden, and she rules in the place of cliance. 
One whom I knew went to Germany and France to 
study the beet - sugar industry there before he bought 
his ranch in Kansas, and he mastered French and Ger- 
man so that he could read all that is known of the 
industry. Others learn chemistrv or employ chemists 
to analyze everything they deal with. These new- 
school farmers publish all that they learn ; they write 
reports for the government to publish, and they lecture 
to farmer audiences in the winter, in which season, bj'-the- 
way, they are generally as busy as the old - time luck 
farmers used to be idle. Tliey keep the most minute 
accounts of outla}^ and income, crediting the refuse they 
l)urn to the fuel account, the stuff cattle eat to the sav- 
ing of fodder, offsetting their earnings with their fixed 
charges, wear and tear of machinery, interest on the 
principal invested, and, in short, tabulating everything. 
These are mainly Eastern and Northern men, but the 
new generation of Southerners is not without represen- 
tation in the scientific class. We shall find, before 
we leave the Teche country, that there are great dis- 
tricts wherein every plantation is owned by Northern 
or Eastern men. The cultivation of semi-tropical fruits 
has been a failure in Florida because the land there was 
taken haphazard by men who are trjnng to farm with 
Providence and dumb luck for partners. Agriculture 
there was based on the theory that if an invalid who 
could not endure Northern winters had money to buy 
land he could o:row oranges in white sand. The new 

108 



school of scientific, talve-nothing-for-granted fanning is 
already taking root there, and will in time make more 
money out of oranges tljan dumb luck has sunk in plant- 
ing them where they did not belong. 

Mr. AVibrey Thompson, while he was aboard the 
Teche, said that he was convinced that the future 
source of sugar will be sorghum. It may not be in his 
time, he says, nor in live hundred years, but the fact 
that he has demonstrated that it is the most })racticable 
product and economical cane, and that it yields most 
readily to the processes of selection, satisfies him that 
the world will in time turn to it for its sugar supply. 
Sorghum in the rough yields twelve per cent, of sugar, 
the same as sugar-cane, but in three years, by choosing 
the best cane and " breeding it," he raised the yield to 
tw^enty and a half per cent. He is certain he can plant 
it and get fourteen per cent, off-hand from a whole 
crop, and in a short time can get sixteen per cent. Po- 
tentially or technically, sorghum is now in tlie best 
position it has ever held yet ; actually, it is bankru]:)t 
and dead. This year only one concern in the country 
will make sorofhura sug-ar. The reason for this is that 
it has always been grown from poor seed. It has not 
been bred or studied, and people have not known how 
to rid the juice of its impurities. All this is overcome, 
and it is seen to be the best producer ; but in the mean 
time the sorghum farmers have lost mone}^ and, worse 
yet, have lost their faith in the cane. 

P'artlier along, from the boat's deck w^e saw Acadian 
men and women gathering Spanish-moss from the trees. 
Our first sight of this peculiar Louisiana industry was 
of a 'Cajun man high up in an oak-tree, half hid in a 
mass of waving gray moss. How he got into it we did 
not see, but now he was tearing his way out of it, cut- 
ting and ripping it, and tossing it down upon the river- 

109 



bank, where it lay in soft, rounding mounds, as the 
clouds of the sky might do if they were treated in the 
same violent way. This moss is sold in New Orleans, 
where it is so highly prized for stuffing mattresses that 
they say nothing in the bed line can equal one that is 
made of a moss mattress and a hair mattress on top of 
a wire-spring mattress. Such a bed, I was told, would 
even satisfy the princess in Andersen's tale who was 
bruised black and blue by the three pease the peasant 
woman put under the mattresses in order to discover 
■whether she really was a princess. The moss-gatherers 
of Louisiana heap the soft fibrous stuff u]>on the ground, 
pour water upon it, and leave to nature the task of rot- 
ting it into a black dry mass. 

This moss, wdiicli is found as far north as Asbury 
Park on the Atlantic coast, is a very peculiar growth. 
It is said not to be a parasite and not to live upon 
anything it gets from the trees. It is believed in most 
parts of the South that it rids the atmosphere of mala- 
rial poison, and where it grows the people boast that 
fevers and chills are as rare as in the mountains. The 
weight of testimony favors this theory, but frankness 
compels me to add that in Florida the tourist will read 
in the circular of one hotel that the presence of Spanish- 
moss " attests the healthf ulness of the climate," while at 
another hotel he will be told that the peculiar merit of 
that locality lies in the fact that Spanish-moss does not 
grow there. This moss, so green and littered with 
pinkish blossoms when in its prime, dies on a dead tree 
when the bark fails to hold it, and then it becomes the 
color of cigar ashes. Patient study of a mass of it will, 
it is said, show" no root, beginning, or end to it, and any 
piece of it wdiicli is blown from one live-oak to another 
may take hold and breed a bedtick filling of it. 

We entered the Bayou Teche on a glorious day, and 

110 



thought it part of a drowsy, dreamy, gentle, semi-tropic 
scene. It runs through the heart of a broad savanna. 
Afar off, on either side, we saw tlie forests of the 
neglected Soutli that has so long awaited the now ap- 
proaching multitude from Europe, but the land beside 
the bayou was every acre cultivated or built upon. We 
could not have found ourselves amid stranger scenes 
had we gone to the French part of Canada or to Eng- 
land or France. Often there was an edging of reeds or 
a 2Tove of oaks that would have resembled an old or- 
chard of the Xorth but for the abundance of tiie fune- 
real moss that bearded every limb. Then we passed 
villages with funn}" little Grecian -looking stores and 
banks and court- houses, all pillared and with pointed 
roofs. Then there were splendid planters' homes, white 
and neat, with rows of Corinthian columns in front and 
a brigade of whitewashed negro cabins in dependent 
nearness, as little chickens cluster near the mother-hen. 
There were pretty white bridges here and there, as 
ornamental amid the greenery as statues on a lawn. 
On these the "quality folks" always gathered to see 
the boat, apart from the colored folks, who huddled 
upon the shore in barbaric colors, every wench wearing 
something red, and chewing tobacco or snuff, and all 
giggling and skylarking like the children that they re- 
main until they die. Two sets of sugar -houses were 
the great monuments of the industr\^ of the region, the 
old more or less ruined refineries of ante -helium days, 
and the unpicturesqne but practical factories of to-day. 

When the boat stopped, as it did with the frequency 
of a milk -cart on a busy route, we were taken to a 
country club, sometimes, and the bar-tender was form- 
ally introduced as Mr. Belden or Mr. Labiche, where- 
u])on everybody " passed the time of day" with him, as 
the Irish put it, before ordering the toddy. In one 

112 



town there had been a ripple of excitement that had 
not quieted when we landed there. An insult had been 
offered to a prominent old citizen, " who was as brave 
as a lion," by a young man whose courage was not ques- 
tioned. Seconds were appointed, and they found that 
the vouno- man liad made a mistake and oiio-ht to 
apologize. 

'• AVe have reached a stnge of civilization where a duel 
would be impossible," said a citizen who was discussing 
the affair. Then he added, " This would have been 
peculiarly distressing, as there are at least ten friends of 
the old gentleman armed and awaiting the outcome of 
the deliberations, while the younger man has at least 
six friends who have their rifles in readiness." 

The kind of hospitality that obtained along the bavou 
was simply astonishing to a Northern man. We were 
begged to leave the boat and visit the homes of friends 
of live minutes, to stay a week or till the next boat ; in 
one case, to take a month of fishing and hunting. Often 
when "we tore away from these kindly persons they 
followed us up with bundles of cigars and bottles of 
good cheer. To have doubted their sincerity would 
have been like doubting the cause of daylight, and yet, 
like that phenomenon, it was almost past comprehen- 
sion. Ah ! but it was also a land of pathos and trag- 
edy. The wounds made by the war may almost be said 
to bleed yet. The clerk of our boat never made a trip 
without stopping at the noble plantation that his father 
owned and lost ; the mate on every voyage sees the 
great acres that his parents were obliged to surrender. 
Everywhere one journeys in the South such are the 
sights; every time men talk (T had almost said) that is 
what one hears. It is not true that the war s))irit is 
alive anywhere except in the talk of politicians, and 
mainly of those in the North, but it is wonderful that 

H 113 



it is not true ; it is wonderful how the South has ad- 
justed itself to its altered condition. 

Through the broad and golden savanna we zigzagged 
all day, eating only three meals m the cabin, yet seem- 
ing to be forever at it. At close intervals everything 
aboard ship moved forward with a lurch, and we knew 
that the vessel had grounded her nose at a landing. 
Down went the great landing-stage that rides before 
her like an upraised claw, and that grabs the bank when 
she stops as a swimmer might hold himself up with one 
hand. Whenever the claw went out to catch the bank 
a bunch of ragged negroes scrambled off, and fell into 
the reeds and bushes, weighted down with the boat's 
hawser, and stumbling, slipping, and falling as they 
fought their way to the trees or the clear ground. Hal- 
looing, swearing, and crashing they made their way, 
working, as all negroes do (when they have to), harder 
than any other laborers in America. The boat made 
fast, order was resumed, and took the shape of a roll- 
ing line of blacks, shouldering bags and packages, and 
shambling to and from the shore as softly as so many 
animated bundles of rags naturally would, for they 
were ragged from their tattered hats down to their 
gaping, spreading, padlike shoes. The length of stay 
at each place was computed b}" the number of " pack- 
ages " on the clerk's list. Fifty meant no time at all, 
200 indicated a chance to stretch one's legs on the bank, 
and 1000 or 2000 carried the opportunity to go to town 
and shake hands with the hearty folk in the law-offices, 
the court-houses, or the clubs. AVhen the last " pack- 
age " — which might be a broom or a steam - engine — 
was put ashore, the scramble of the roustabouts was re- 
peated. The line was cast off, the claw began to rise 
by steam-power, and the darkies rushed down the bank, 
and hung on to it, and climbed up at the greatest possi- 

lU 




THE CLERK 



ble risk of being' left, and losing as many dollars ov dol- 
lars and a half as they were days from the city. No 
officer of the boat ever considered them at all. 

These were incidents of a day's travel along the Bayou 
Teche. Towards bed-time we stopped at one place where 
the clerk's list of packages assured us we might go ashore 
and visit a planter whose house was near the bayou. 
The place proved a t3'])ical old manor-house, and 3'et 
what a change liad befallen it ! Instead of the bustling 
household of before the war — the queenlike mistress, 
the young ladies with Parisian finish, the little chil- 
dren, the governess, the ever-numerous guests, the troop 
of servants, the bird and fox hounds, and the plensure- 
loving Soutliern lord — only one room showed a light. 
The rest of the liouse was dark. We went in, and found 
a log fire blazing cheerily on an open hearth in a bach- 
elor's paradise, bare-floored, with magazines, pipes, cigar- 
boxes, and newspapers scattered all about, and a general 
tone of disorder and settled loneliness. The planter said 
that liis wife was in Cliicago, where lie also spent much 
of his time. 

At daybreak we were awakened to find the boat at 
the plantation of Messrs. Oxnard and Sprague, new- 
found New Orleans friends who had invited us to visit 
them. Although it was but daylight, the great colon- 
naded and galleried mansion, as fine as a lord's country- 
seat in England, was the seat of a welcoming bustle. 
Breakfast was spread in the great dining-room upon a 
snow-white cloth, before a blazino- loo- Hre. Aoain the 
j^'oprietors were Northerners and bachelors, and the 
floors and walls were bare, while literature, guns, and 
smoking im])lements made picturesque disorder. 

I found next day that the plantations lay side by side 
up and down the bayou for miles, as farms do along a 
Jersey pike, or cottages neighbor each other on a village 

116 



road. Were they all maintained by Xorthern men and 
bachelors? The inqniry bi'onglit the response that not 
one of the old Sonthei'ii ])lanters had managed to keep 
his acres, and that of the new Northern ones only one 
in that particular neighborhood had his wife with him. 
Profitable as sugar-planting is, it can onh^ be carried on 
after a great primal outlay. A modern, well-equipped, 
economical sugar-house, with its machinery, costs at least 
$300,000, independent of the cost of the hundreds and 
perhaps thousands of acres of land bought at $4:0 each, 
at an average. Men who have the means to venture 
upon such an outlay can afford to live where they will ; 
and, as a rule, their homes are in New Orleans or other 
cities, and the old manor-houses which came with the 
acres are considered as mere conveniences or business 
headquarters. 

These are the earnest and the scholarly latter-day 
planters of whom I have spoken — self-instructed ]tlod- 
ders or favored college graduates who have learned that 
the laboratory of to-day, and the scientific re])orts and 
periodicals of the age, are l)etter from a business p(jint 
of view than the wine-cellars and French novels of the 
departed era. These new - comers will make Louisiana 
rich, and America royal over princeh'^ nations of Chris- 
tendom. But to find these jieople and this new condi- 
tion actually within tlie walls of the feudal palaces of 
shivery days sent a sentimental chill to my very marrow. 
In Mr. Sprague's great house, over and above all the 
kindness and hospitality he showered around him, and 
stronger than the kindliness of his very atmosphere, was 
the sadness of having the dead, assassinated past so pei'- 
sistently thrust into the mind. He will not mind my 
using his house to ]:)oint the tale of the revolution in tiio 
South, for he knows that it is a thing apart from the 
merry time he made for me, and from the friendships 

117 



that were engendered by his kindness. He must him- 
self have felt that it was sti'ange to walk about the great 
wide halls and through the immense high I'ooms of the 
house, with doors and windows a dozen feet high, and 
with fireplaces framed in marble, and to think what 
such a mansion was intended for, of the departed state 
and pride of which such a house is the emptied cage, 
the violated tomb. Between rows of moss - curtained 
oaks and great pecans was the avenue where the horses 
and carriages brought the gentry to the broad galleries 
and broader halls, where they disported an aristocracy 
that was not out of place in their days. 

If the lower Atchafalaya suggested England, the 
Teche country was like Holland, with its extended flat 
vistas, far along which the sky met the plough-tracked, 
water -riddled land. But on high were the Southern 
buzzards, noisome to the sight and to another sense, but 
ever-beautiful when on the wing. Apparently no South- 
ern view omits them. I could almost say I never looked 
up in the daytime without seeing them soaring, with 
the grace of better birds, eternally. The mules, the buz- 
zards, and the negroes broke the IloUandish similitude. 
Near the Oxnard-Sprague house was a street of negro 
cabins in a double row, from which came the varied 
sounds of jews- harps, laughter, and quarrelling. The 
cabins were of one sort — -the single type all over the 
South — one-storied, often one-roomed, and with a rude 
brick chimney outside and a gaping fireplace within. 
Nearly all the white folks who trudged along the high- 
way were Acadians, all but hallowed by the magic of 
Lono-fellow, and it was strano-e indeed to hear that we 
must not call them 'Oajuns to their faces lest they be 
offended, that the term is taken as one of reproach, and 
that the negro farm hands taken care of on the white 
men's places look down upon these people who have to 

118 




sMja-jt»jffc,' 'JiL*''fer'g5a 



take care of themselves, as the darkies elsewhere look 
down upon '' poor whites." Among the Acadians along 
the Bayou Teche are very many Avho are ignorant, un- 
tidy, and unambitious, though nearly all are saving of 
what they get. Some perform odd jobs, as work is 
offered to them, and some work the land for those 
jilanters who have more than they can manage, and 
who guarantee a certain sum which leaves a margin 
of profit for the crops they are able to raise. We 
saw some rather pretty Acadian girls, dark-skinned, and 
just missing beauty because of the heaviness of their 
faces, and we asked them where we could find a certain 
group of Choctaw Indians' houses where we might buy 
Indian basket-work. They did not understand us at all 
until I bethought me that Indians Avere sauvages to the 
French mind. I tried the girls with that word, and 
they brightened up and led us to the Indian cabins, 
which were in no wise different, exteriorly, from the 
near-by homes of the girls themselves. 

The last of the Acadians to reach this new home of 
theirs came onlj^a little morethan acentnryago; yet the\r 
were only a thousand strong then, while now they num- 
ber forty thousand. Whether any of their " Evangelmes " 
wedded Choctaw bucks I do not know, but a sufficient 
number of the French Kova-Scotians married Indian 
squaws to lend the Acadian faces of to-day a strong- 
trace of kinship with the peo])le they call savages. Vet 
I never, outside of British Columbia, saw Indians so 
uncouth as were many of the swarthy yet kindly and 
simple exiles from Grand Pre, who here have found a 
drowsy, luxuriant, flowery, and sunny land just suited 
to their natures. 

I spent twenty -four hours on the ])lantation, and 
every wakeful hour brought a new delight, found some- 
times in the great Imre house, sometimes in the fields, 

120 



and sometimes in the near-by village. Thei'e was no 
unfriendliness towards the new-comers that I could see; 
indeed, in the villaii-e there were only a few cottao-es 
half buried amid flowers along a bowery perfumed 
road, a somnolent shop or two, a lazyman's hotel, and 
two restful-looking churches. To turn from that slow- 
going, placid settlement, moss-grown like its trees, to 
the huge pulsating refineries of the invaders was to be 
reminded of a sudden change in a disordered dream. 

Yet just such companions as these two forces are 
found throughout the region. Thus the new South 
works side by side with the old one, the one vigor- 
ous and promising, the other placid, picturesque, and 
doomed. 

131 



lY 

IN SUNNY MISSISSIPPI 

We say we like London because of its historic asso- 
ciations and haunts, and we think of them so often that 
we come to regard our country as lacking the things 
wdiich awaken reverent emotion. A mere tomb in an 
English graveyard, or a lettered slab in the pavement 
of one of the Inns of Court, sends us back a century or 
two as we ponder what some poet did and how he lived 
and what were his surroundings. And yet the senti- 
mental mind may finil plenty of this sort of delight 
here in America — delight that should be extreme to an 
American. I thought of that in Richmond when I saw 
the porti'ait of poor Pocahontas in the Capitol, close to 
that of Liglit-horse Harry Lee and to those of some of 
the famous royal Governors. And I thouglit of how 
there was a Virginia known to Shakespeare, as well as 
a '' vexed Bermoothes." And so it was again when I 
found myself in Charleston, with its museum of ante- 
Revolutionary buildings, and its French traces that 
point back to the earliest Protestant settlement within 
our national borders. In New Orleans, again, a wealth 
of romantic and picturesque and gayly colored remind- 
ers of shifting dynasties and exciting history beats in 
upon my mind. Finally I came to Mississippi, and at 
Biloxi stood upon the ground whereon M. d'Iberville 
planted the flag of his royal master of France in 1699, 
nearly 200 years ago, but 157 years after De Soto sailed 

122 



the Father of Waters that fronts that same State. Ah ! I 
can be very happy indeed when I find myself in Carlyle's 
favorite tobacconist's in Chelsea by the Cheyne Walk, 
but I can command a more brilliant panorama, and one 
that moves as directly towards my own proud citizen- 
ship, when I pursue the same bent of mind in my own 
country. 

To Biloxi one goes to get sick in order to be happy. 
That is one of the peculiar charms of the entire Gulf 
coast of the State of Mississippi. Surely as you go there 
you will fall ill of the local distemper, and that is one 
of the main incentives for making the journey. When 
I was in Chattanooga, not long ago, the cream of the 
gentry were ill and contented by reason of an enforced 
command for general vaccination to ward off a threat 
of small-pox which never materialized. But down at 
Biloxi and Pass Christian (pronounced chris-(7/«;^) and 
Ocean Springs and those other bits of dreamland on the 
Mississippi coast nobody gets sick in order not to be 
sicker. No one down there takes the local illness in 
preference to some other disorder. In that peculiar 
region every one becomes invalided as badly as possible 
solely for the love of the malady. 

I first heard of it in a barber's shop. A man came 
along, and the barber hailed him. " When are you go- 
ing to come and get my hot- water a]>])aratus and mend 
the leak in it?" he asked. " Can you take it now V 

'' No," said the mechanic. " Til call around very 
soon. I was going to come and get it a couple of 
weeks ago ; and then, again, I was pretty near coming 
for it the week before that. I'll get around. Y'ain't 
in no hurry, are you ?" 

" Oh, well — er — not a reg'lar hurry," said the barber. 
" I'd be using the thing every day if it was in order. 
But I'll get alono: all right." 

o o o 

12:5 



I was in a holiday resort, and this was certainl}^ a 
holiday spirit which both men were displaying, and yet 
it seemed that both were rather too slow even for a 
holiday coaple. 

"IIow does that fellow make a living 'r' I asked. 

"Oh, he's a Creole," said the barber. "He don't re- 
quire much for a. living. A cigarette and a glass of 
water makes a Creole breakfast, you know, and down 
in this country you give any young fellow a dugout 
and a cast-net and he's able to marry." 

After a pause the barber said, proudly, " Oh, w^e've 
all got the Ijiloxi fever." 

'' What sort of a ferver is that ?" 

" You'll find out when you have been here awhile. 
How long have you been here ?" 

"About two hours," said I. 

" Well," said the barber, " you'll have it bad to-mor- 
row — that is, it will seem bad at first, though reall}" it 
gets worse and worse the longer you stay. Wh}^ the 
natives have it so that there's dozens of girls here who 
are becoming old maids because it is too much of an 
effort for their beaux to propose to 'em." 

The fever seized me at eleven o'clock of the next 
forenoon, as with my friend Mr. Fletcher, of Xew 
Orleans, I was pursuing the truly Northern custom of 
" takin"- a walk." Before half a mile had been trav- 
ersed a store porch appeared before us and impeded 
our progress. It is true that it was on one side of the 
thoroughfare, and the way i)ast it was broad and level. 
But it was a demon porch — a thing with the soul if not 
the sonff of a siren. In the sunlight it seemed to smile 
on us seductively, and it spread its two side-posts like a 
welcoming lover's arms, while its clean warm floor ap- 
])eared to advance and insinuate itself under us, so that, 
without knowing how or why it was, we found our- 

124 




GKOTTO AT BILOXI 



selves seated there, stricken with the fever and at ease. 
One must catch the complaint to appreciate it. It is 
not fatal any more than Nirvana is, and in my ])ractical 
Occidental way of tii inking it is very like Nirvana, and 
better, because it has the advantage of leaving you on 
earth, and with tiie same enjoyment of food and flowers 
and wine and song tiiat you had before. It is not laziness. 
None but a dull hind would call it that. It is the very 
thing that the Europeans who criticise us for our fever 

125 



of unrest should recommend as a substitute, for it is a 
fever for rest. A mere doctor would describe it as a 
malady peculiar to the Gulf coast from Mobile to New 
Orleans. He would say that it has been observed that 
large numbers of men and women, by combining in 
large cities, are able to exercise sufficient will power 
to ward it off, so that it is prevalent in Mobile and 
New Orleans only among the colored people. Then 
he would go on to say that its first symptoms are a 
stiffening of the motor muscles of the legs, followed 
by a sense of leaden heaviness in the patient's feet. 
The patient will be observed to talk rationally, and to 
sustain an ordinary light conversation, but will on no 
account move from a chair, except it be to drop into the 
next one he comes to. 

In the absence of chairs the patients are observed to 
sit upon barrels, boxes, store porches, and door-steps in 
the public streets, even though, before they were strick- 
en, they were in the habit of applying harsh names, such 
as "loafers," "trash," and "tramps" to those who did 
the same thing. They sit upon wharves and upturned 
boats and tree stumps, upon grassy ledges and fallen 
logs, and, if they are permanent r-esidents of the infected 
districts, the}^ build seats all about their open grounds. 
They put benches about on the grass and piazzas, and 
even on the road-sides. In many cases they order great 
pavilions like giant nests built around their trees, and 
having no energy with which to conjure a new and fit 
name for these airy perches in which they while aw^ay 
precious time, they call them " shoo-flies," a name utterly 
without significance in that connection. They will hear 
the news of the day if any one will tell it or read it to 
them, but they cannot be prevailed upon to take up a 
newspaper. Northern men, when at home, who take 
three morning newspapers, an afternoon paper, and a 

126 



score of weeklies and magazines, show the same aversion 
for printed news as those who cannot read at all. An 
instance is related of a Northern editor coming to Bi- 
loxi and falling a prey to this strange disorder. Hav- 
ing a New Orleans paper pressed upon him with the 
hint that it contained a description of the burning of 
his newspaper building during the previous night, he 
pushed the sheet away, saying : " Let her burn. I 
am here for rest, and don't want business mixed up 
Avith it." 

The same leading medical journal which records this 
case — so a mere doctor would continue — also cites 
an instance of a Northern broker in stocks who ar- 
ranged to pay extra for his board on condition that the 
hotel clerk should tell him if AVestern Union drop])ed 
below 81f, but should never, under any other circum- 
stances, mention any serious matter to him during his 
stay in the hotel. 

Thus a professional student of the disease would de- 
scribe the Biloxi fever, missing the very essence of that 
which any person affected with the complaint would 
speak of at the outset. That point is its engaging char- 
acter, its sensuous, dreamy, delicious, soothing nature. 
No one who has it would be cured of it on any account, 
until the time came to make a supreme effort of will 
and catch the train for the North. A poet might liken 
it to floating on whipped cream in a rose-leaf. Or, to 
put it so that the dullest mind can grasp it, the feeling- 
is what you are sure a great good - natured Newfound- 
land dog enjoys when he lies blinking at the sun after 
a hearty dinner. To be sure, it may be carried to ex- 
tremes, just as some persons go to great lengths with 
the measles and chicken-pox, and in such a case I can 
easily fancy that a man with a good supply of the fever 
would neglect his wife and babies, and sit on the head 

127 



of a barrel in the sun for years, without saying who he 
was to any detectives that might be hii-ed to find him 
and bring him out of Biloxi. 

At all events, we sat down on the store ]iorch in the 
fever - stricken town, and just then a fire broke out. It 




A SIIOO-FLY 



was announced by a half-dozen lazy strokes of a bell, 
which created a great disturbance. There was no yell- 
ing or rushing about or surging of crowds. The dis- 
turbance was confined to a dozen volunteer firemen. 
They were resting in their homes and shops and offices, 
and the alarm was unexpected. Some had to dress, and 
others had to hunt up tneir tire-hats. These were things 
that are not done recklessly in Biloxi, but are well and 

138 



carefully considered beforehand. It was therefore some 
little time before the firemen began to a])pear in the 
streets and to come calmly — as Matthew Arnold would 
have had all us Americans do — up to where my friend 
and I were seated, and then next door to the engine- 
house. On the way, at nearly every gate, the women 
halted them to ask where the lire was, and in exvry 
case the firemen took time to formulate a well-digested 
])olite answer, to the effect that they were sorry not to 
be able to say at that time anything of value about the 
fire. In time they got the handsome old-fashioned 
hand -engine out into the street, and after a little badi- 
nage and a resting -spell they shrewdly paused to dis- 
cuss the route I\y wliicli they might most easily reach 
the general locality indicated by the number rung out 
b\' the bell. There being several discordant ojiinions 
to weigh, this also consumed a few minutes. Finally, 
like a well-ordered body, they and the machine got un- 
der headway ^md presently disappeared, leaving us to 
the full enjoyment of the succeeding quiet, which was 
only disturbed by a thoughtless question put by one of 
us to a street boy as to what sort of a tree it was that 
spread its noble height and width across our horizon. 
The bo}"" replied that it was a pecan (he said "pecawn "); 
and had he stopped at that all would have been well, 
but he launched out upon a perfect clatter of facts 
about the nuts the tree bore, the number of bushels it 
yielded, the price they brought, and, in short, a shower 
of disturbing and unwelcome information. 

After a long time the firemen came back in the same 
leisurely, dignified way as they had departed. AVe 
heard a woman ask them if they liad saved the build- 
ing, and we heard a fireman's reply, "Xo, ma'am: the 
building had gone when we got there; but we saved 
the ground." 

I 129 



It is to be hoped that before the fever seizes you the 
country round about the town will haA^e tempted you to 
enjo}^ its many delights. They speak down there of. the 
strange habit the Northern uien and women have of 
taking long walks, a thing the Southern mind staggers 
at newl}^ at each presentation of the phenomenon. In 
our far South, if one has not a horse or a sail-boat, and 
cannot borrow either, there is nothing to do but to stay 
at home. To be sure, the Xortbern pedestrians take 
few Avalks Ijefore tliey are fever - stricken and leg -stiff- 
ened and stranded in chairs in tlie sunsbine. But what 
walks ! Along the beach the water flashes before the 
town, all aglitter in the sunlight, and bej^ond lie the 
long green islands of the Gulf, fringed with spreading 
trees, now dense and now mere green lace -work, with 
the blue sky and bluer Giilf visible through it. The 
j)edestrians turn away and explore the land only to 
come back enraptured, telling of the templelike forest 
of pines that overspreads the land, of the light and 
shade, of the vivid green feathered against the clear 
l)kie, of the white sand underfoot with its soft red car- 
peting of dead pine-needles, of the stillness and the 
purity and almost parklike semblance of order every- 
where within the forest. Alas, that they should soon 
lose the energy to i-enew such pleasure, and that it 
should joy them only in their memories ! 

The village is picturesque, and but that this one is 
the oldest of these Gulf I'esorts (and was a summering- 
place for New Orleans folk in the long, long ago), what 
is said of it will answer for all the others. It is made 
up of little cottages of pretty and uncommon designs 
that have sprung from French beginnings. (Jften the 
second stories project beyond the parlor floors so as to 
provide a lower porch ; and here and there are seen 
prettily shaped openings in the upper stories so as to 

130 



make additional galleries. AVlien vines trail up the 
house fronts and frame tliese galleries the effect is very 
pretty. Vegetation is al)undant, the trees are of great 
size, and flowers grow in luxuriance, though it is whis- 
pered that there is suflicient cliill in the air of winter 
nights to make it prudent to pull the potted plants in- 
doors in cold sjiells. The green gardens and cliromatic 
cottages lie prettily beside white sand streets, where 
there are no sidewalks, but borders of grass instead. 
Natives point out the trees as chinaberries, willows, 
cypresses, magnolias, oranges, pecans, pe'aches, plums, 
and ap])les. The people love the castor -bean, because 
it has a tropical look, I suppose, and thrives so well 
down there. I have seen fifty-three orange-trees in one 
garden, checkered with golden fruit and greenery, and 
have found the oranges as delicious as any I ever ate. 
The buds come upon the trees before the fruit is 
plucked. The people in the tin\' streets and gardens 
are extremely democratic. They talk to all who pass 
their way, and if a stranger like myself refuses to make 
a free exchange of his business for theirs, they will give 
up theirs quite as freely, if he will stop and listen. 

These are often Western folk, for our Eastern people 
have not discovered this perpetual summer land, but 
liave allowed men and women from the other end of 
the Mississippi Valley to steal this march upon them. 
Therefore Ave find a small section of the place spoken 
of as a Michigan settlement, and in addition there are 
many regular winter visitors from Wisconsin, Iowa, and 
Illinois. They discovered the Gulf coast about seven 
years ago, aiul make it a habit to come either in Xo- 
vember or after the holidays, and to stay till warm 
weather reaches the North. The greater number go to 
Pass Chi'istian, a rather new place, prettily spread along 
the beach, and with a large well-managed hotel main- 

131 



tained by Cliicago people. r)cean Springs, Bay St. Louis, 
and Jjiloxi are the other resorts. Biloxi, the oldest, is 
the most (piaintly typical, slightly French ilied Southern 
town of them all. Bathing, tishing, driving, and cot- 
tage and hotel life are the diversions. 

A great many of these visitors buy cottages and mod- 
ernize them, renting them for a hundred or a hundred 
and fifty dollars ay hen they go away in the summer, at 
which time the Kew Orleans folk come along. 

At Mrs. Drysdale's altogether excellent, old-fashioned, 
but brand-new hotel in Biloxi I could find no fault with 
anything, but it is said that the Western visitors cannot 
abide the high seasoning with chile pe})per and garlic 
wdiich the Creole taste demands, or the Southern ten- 
dency to fry everything, even the fruit, or the coffee 
that is made "so strong that it stains the cups,'' or the 
singular Gulf -coast custom of breaking fast at nine 
o'clock in the morning and dining at two o'clock in the 
afternoon. Cottage life, therefore, has the greater num- 
ber of votaries in that region. They go there to escape 
the Northern winters, and are told that the Gulf coast 
has only two cold spells in each winter — one in Novem- 
ber and one in February. When these come they are 
found to bring a temperature like that of boarding- 
house tea. Bathing can be indulged in all the year — 
enjoyed all the year by the men, I should say, and in- 
dulged in l)y the women, for the custom down there is 
for the women to immerse themselves in little pens 
under the l)ath-liouses, between lattice-work walls. 

Interesting Southern peculiarities are plentiful down 
tliere. I never saw a pecan-tree, for instance, that I did 
not think of the famous " nigger candy '' of New Or- 
leans — the irresistible candy of the Crescent City side- 
walks. There they take the pecan-nuts, which we eat 
raw, as if we had no more ingenuity than squirrels, and 



sprinkling them in great calves of pnre brown sugar, 
produce a confection to which they give the French 
name of prffJ/'nc, but which is so unlike any other candy 
in the \vorld as to deserve a new American name of its 
own. The old ''mammies" make the candies in disks 
big enough to cover the bottom of a silk hat, and even 
yet keep the trade to themselves and away from the 
merchants, although the visitors to the gay city buy up 




.JEFFEKSON DAVIS S MANSION, UEAUVOIH, AT BILOXI 



whole trays of them, and even ship them to the North 
and East. Down here in Mississi})pi the scu])pernong 
grape finds its farthest Southern foothold, I think ; at 
least, I have not found it farther away. Travellers to 
Asheville and Florida will remember that it is the wine 
that is served at that celebrated railway restaurant in 
North Carolina where the ])roprietor and the waiters 
vie with one another in forcing " extras " and second 
portions of the nicest dishes upon the wayfarers. There 
can scarcely be such another restaurant as that. '' Do 
have another quail," says the proprietor. "Let me give 

1:5:3 



you moi'e of this scu[)pernong wine. It is made near 
liere, and is perfectly pure." " Won't you take an 
orange or two into the cars with you i" or *' Here's a 
bunch of fresh flowers to give to 3'our ladies." The 
scuppernong wine has even more of that peculiar 
•' fruit}^" flavor than the best California wines— a flavor 
that I am barbarian enough to prefer to the *' pucker" 
of the imported claret. You may have it with your 
meals in Biloxi. And if you are a drinking man, which 
Heaven forefend, you may have "toddy" in the style 
that obtains from Virginia to farthermost Texas, and 
that has been imported to Arkansas, Missouri, and the 
Indian Territory. 

It was on the banks of the Arkansas River, in Indian 
Territory, that I made the acquaintance of this method 
of — as a friend of mine would say — '' spoiling good licp 
uor." The famous Indian champion. Colonel Boudinot, 
introduced me to a planter whose two cabins, side by 
side and joined by a single roof, formed the most pictur- 
esque home that I saw on that splendid river. I was 
introduced as plain " mister," but that would not do 
down there. 

" Coloiid Ralph," said the planter, "enjoy this yer 
boundless panorama of nature. Feast yo' e^^es, sah, on 
the beautiful river." (Then aside : " Wife, set out the 
mixin's in the back room.") " Colonel Ralph, 3'ou are 
welcome to share with us this grand feast of scenery and 
nature's ornaments. But, sah, I think my wife has set 
out something — just a little something — in the house. 
I dun'no' what it is, sah, but if you find it good, I shall 
oe delighted, sah." 

So we went into the back room with this other Colonel 
Mulberry Sellers, and there on the dining-table stood a 
Ijottle, a bowl of sugar, three glasses and spoons, and a 
glass pitcher full of spring water. 

134 



" Serve yourself to a toddy, colonel,"' said my host. 

•* I'll watch you lirst,'' said T ; " I don't know what 
a toddy is." 

" Don't know what a toddy is T said the hospitable 
man. " AVhy, sah, that does seem strange to me. Back 
in gran' ole Virginia, sah, we children were all brought 
up on it, sah. Every morning my revered father and 
my sainted mother began the day with a toddy, sali. 
and as we children appeared, my mother pre])ared for 
each one an especially tempered drink of the same, sah, 
putting — I regret to say — a little more water in mine 
than the others' because I was the youngest of the 
children." 

As he spoke, he dippetl some sugar into his glass. 
poured in a little water, sufficient to make a syrup when 
the two ingredients were stirred with a spoon, and then 
emptied in an Arkansas "stilfener" of whiskey — a jo- 
rum, as the English would say. That is the drink of 
the South, where drinking, without beiug carried to any 
excess that I ever witnessed, still remains a genteel ac- 
complishment, as it was held to be by the English, 
Scotch, and Irish who were the progenitors of nearly 
all our Southern brothers. 

Beauvoir, the seat of the family of Jefferson Davis, 
is close by Biloxi, and as Mississippi reveres his memory 
as that of her most distinguished citizen, I rode over to 
visit the old place. I had thought of Mississippi as the 
last stronghold of the Southern sectional feeling, and 
so it may be, but I discovered even less signs of it there 
than anywhere else in the South. Nowhere did I en- 
counter a greater and a closer mingling of the natives 
with the new immigrant element, which latter is grow- 
ing strong there in the development of that new rela- 
tionship which is springing up between the Western 
people at the head of the Mississippi A'alley and the 




15ACHELOKS QUAKTER8. BKAUVOIK 



Southern people at the foot of it. That is a new growth 
of trade and friendship which the student of this coun- 
try's development will soon need to tidve into account. 

But it is a sti'ong fresh meraor}^ that natives and 
new-comers share alike, of the ex-President of the Con- 
federacy as he journeyed to his upper plantation or to 
'New Orleans or walked through the white streets of 
Biloxi, a tall, spare, impassive man of great natural dig- 
nity, and always clad in a suit of Confederate gray, 
under a soft military hat, until he was seen for the last 
time. Although a Kentuckian by birth, his life is bound 
u]) with the history of Mississippi. For that State he 
served as an elector in 1844, voting for Polk and Dallas, 
lie w'as a planter there, and went from there to Con- 
gress in the next year. As Colonel of the First Mis- 
sissippi Volunteers he fought bravely in the Mexican 
war, and later he was one of the Senators of his State 
in the Federal Congress and Secretary of AVar under 
President Pierce. After the collapse of the Confetler- 

136 



acv he made Beau voir Lis most favored retreat and 
resting-place, and there, until he died, he received let- 
ters from the young- college students of the South ask- 
ing his advice as to their future courses in life, and 
visits alike from Northern and Southern folk, the one 
to make his acquaintance, the others to tender their 
sympathy and respect. 

The way to Beauvoir lies either along the beach or 
through the woods ; but I chose the forest road, that I 
might as many times as possible enjoy its wondei-ful 
order and neatness and beauty. The trees rise, at short 
distances apart, above the level clean sand, and there 
is nowhere a suggestion of impurity either upon the 
ground or in the clear sweet balsamic air. There is a 
constant suggestion of something cathedral-like in the 
regular uniform columns of the forest, the meetings of 
their limbs overhead, and the closing shallow vistas, as 
of naves, on every hand. The dwarf palmetto, or S])an- 
ish-bayonet, grows in little clumps or singly, as one 
would distribute it for ornament, and the very tropical 
long-leaf pines, leaping high in air before they put out 
a branch, and then spreading their tops like palms, 
are the chief denizens of these silent depths. Here and 
there are wet s])ots, it is true, and then the parklike 
character of the wo<jds changes to a jungle, but a jungle 
so thick with gum, bay, magnolia, and other trees that 
one cannot see the dank water they shut in. 

By the wood road the back of Beauvoir is first reached, 
and is found to be a tract of ten acres, devoted to the 
cultivation of the scuppernong grape. The vineyard is 
a scene of disorder and neglect. The rude arbors are 
rotting and falling upon the vines, and the young per- 
simmon and i)ecan trees that have been set out there 
are endangered b}^ the weeds that grow riotously, to 
exaggerate the suggestion of desolation. The mansion 

v.]7 



is around a bend of the road, commanding the dark bkie 
Gulf, from beliind ample grounds whose fence separates 
the place but does not hide its beauties from the white 
beacli drive that slvirts the water. The greatest storm 
in many years had torn up the road when I was there, 
and, worse 3'et, had played havoc witli the splendid 
trees that beautified the noble estate. There are many 
ii'iant live-oaks and a few hickories and cedars, but, akis ! 
the ground Avas littered with the debris of their wreck- 
age, and some were prone upon the earth — one of tlie 
dead being a splendid big hickory, which it would have 
been supposed no wind could maltreat. The gate was 
tied up, and the house was closed, so that had it been 
pointed out to me as a haunted house, abandoned by 
its owners, the scene presented there would have been 
exactly accounted for. 

It has been a noble place, and could be made so again 
with little trouble and expense. Ko house that I have 
seen in the South is more eloquent of the full possibili- 
ties of the aristocratic baronial life of the planter l)efore 
the war. To look upon it even now is to recall a thou- 
sand tales and anecdotes of the elegant life, the hospi- 
tality, and the comfort of the old regime. The main 
house is a great, square, low building, witli a gallery oii 
three sides, reached by a broad, liigli flight of steps. A 
great and beautiful door leads to a wide central hail- 
way, through which one could see, when the house was 
open, either the blue Gulf and distant islands in front, 
or the great oaks witli their funereal drapery of Spanish- 
moss in the rear. Two other similar but smaller houses 
stand, like heralds of the old hospitality, a little forwaril 
on either side of the mansion. Both are square, red- 
roofed, one-stor}^ miniatures of the manor-house. Each 
has its roof reaching out to form a broad porch in front. 
One is the bachelors' quarters, for guests and relatives 

188 



of tliat unhappy persuasion, and the other is Mr. Davis's 
library and retreat. There everything is as he loved to 
have it around liini when he sat in-doors, and out on 
the beacii is the ruin and wreck of a seat under some 
live-oaks where lie used to sit and look upon the broad 
water and reflect upon ids extraordinar}^ and most 
active hfe. Behind these three buildings is the usual 
array of out-buildings, such as every Southern mansion 
collected in its shadow — tlie kitchen, the servants' (|uar- 
ters, the dairy, and the others. 




IN TUE LIBRARY AT BEAUVOIU 



I went into the little librar}^ buikling and saw his 
books, his pictures, his easy-chair and table, and — behind 
the main room — his tiny bedroom and anteroom, the 
bedroom being so small that it could accommodate no 
larger bed than the mere cot which is shoved against 

1 ;5!) 



the window. His books would indicate that he was a 
religious man Avith a subordinate interest in history. In 
a closet he kept a remarkable collection of pra3''er- 
books, and in an open case were man}' volumes of 
novels, which the care-taker of the place called "trash," 
and accounted for with the explanation that Mr. Davis 
maintained a sort of circulating library for the use of 
his ex-Confederate soldier friends. The pictures that 
still hang upon the walls struck me as a strange collec- 
tion. One shows some martyrs, dead, in a gladiatorial 
amj)hitheatre ; one is of a drowned girl floating beneath 
a halo in a night-darkened stream ; one is a portrait of 
our Saviour beside several madonnas ; and onl}' one is a 
military picture. Thither came constant visitors, for 
it was "the thing to do'' in Biloxi — far too much so for 
the privacy and comfort of the family, I suspect ; but it 
is recollected that Mr. Davis delii>hted in showing- his 
library to all who called after twelve o'clock noon. The 
main house was seen only b}' those who had a claim 
upon his affections. I visited it and found it made up of 
noble rooms and decorated beautifully with fresco-work. 
l>ut nearly all the furniture and ornaments and pictures 
were packed up or covered as if ready for removal. The 
effect ujwn my mind was sad and almost tragic, and I 
hastened from the widespread scene of havoc and of 
neglect, which even threatens the house itself. I learned 
enough to know that this does not i-eiiect discredit upon 
the little family that was bereaved b}' the Southern 
leader's death, for the maintenance of the place would 
entail an expense which, if they were able to meet it. 
would still be an unwise disposition of their means. 

It was with less pleasure that, on returniug to Biloxi. 
r conjured up a ]>icture of the old man threading the 
village streets, where every man who passed him lifted 
his hat, where :ill who had grievances stopped him to 

140 



get his ready sympatli y, mid where those who had served 
him pressed his hand as they met liim. It may be fit- 
ting, in view of eveiything that has passed, that Bean- 
voir shoukl become a ruin, but liardly so soon as tliis. 

I said so to the honest old German who is in charge 
of the place, and whom I found battling hopelessly with 
the tons of wreckage left by the last great storm. He 
shook his head, and it seemed to me that his eyes were 
moist. 

" Were you a Confederate soldier f ' I asked. 

lie turned upon me quickly. 

" Of course I was," he said ; •' else T should not l)e 
here." 

Every prospect from the shore about Biloxi includes 
at least one of the long low wooded islands in the glit- 
tering Gulf, and every look establishes a telegraphic 
communication b}^ which the islands seem to sa}^, "" Come 
out to us; we will give you joy." (^n the mainland, 
too, the people urge you to acce])t the invitation, 
"They are different from the shore, and prettier," they 
say. Lucky are you if you yield to all these solicita- 
tions. They are jewels — emeralds studding the tur- 
quoise gulf. They are foreign. You feel, even though 
you have never been to the Sandwich Islands, that these 
are like them, and that you are in a new and unfamiliar 
but beautiful country. The mainland had seemed like 
a bit of ornament, of lace -work on the edge of our 
country, but these islands appear to be not of our coun- 
try at all. They are Polynesian, if they are not Ha- 
waiian. They are all long and narrow, sometimes eigh- 
teen miles long and only half a mile wide, and they are 
said to be crawling in the direction they point to — tow- 
ards Mexico. It is said that the time was when they 
were joined to Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, but 
the water cut them otT, and now it keeps cutting away 

141 



the landward ends and building out tlie farther points, 
so that they seem to be lazily moving to the tropics. 1 
do not vouch for the story, but give it as I got it, be- 
cause it accords with their foreignness to think of them 
as lazy, indolent travellers, seeking a climate more con- 
genial than that with which fate first bound them. 

Out on those islands the sand is as white as the whitest 
sugar, the water is as deep a blue as that of the Adri- 
atic, and the sky is like the side of a lighted lantern of 
pale blue silk. Tlie snow-white sand is continually shift- 
ing, changing its surface forms, travelling constantly, 
as if the progress of the islands was too slow for it. 
Thus it happens that 5^ou see towering white dunes of 
it which reach a knifelike edge into the water, and then 
rise gradually higher and higher in a soft white plane 
until they are forty feet high, and there they end ab- 
ruptly, so that from behind they appear like towering 
smooth white walls. They bury the trees, of many sorts 
that you do not remember to have seen on shore, and 
their dead trunk ends and black bodies protrude here 
and there above or in the faces of the devouring white 
hills. 

The water is apt to be as gentle and calm as it is 
blue, basking eternally in the brilliant sunlight. But 
when a breeze ruffles it billions of brilliant gems appear 
as its upturned ])oints sparkle all over it. It is a pisca- 
torial Eden, alive with fish. It is so clear that you may 
see them at their play and work, fishes of ever so many 
and ever such queer kinds. Great turtles are among 
them, and sharks and porpoises and gars, darting or 
hanging, as if they too had the Biloxi fever, above 
schools of sheep's-head and pompano, and I know not 
how many other sorts of creatures. You could not see 
them better if you were looking through the clear glass 
walls of a vast aquarium. You undress and plunge in 

142 



to find the water just as you would order it if you could, 
a mere trifle cooler than the atmosphere, but ever so 
buoyant. You float and loll and lie about and dream 
in it, thanking the Creator that you are the veriest bit 
amphibious, and fancying yourself completely so. 

There js little other animal life than what you bring- 
on most of the islands. On some there are people 
enough to spoil them, but on others there may be onl}^ 
one shant}^ or a light-house, or no habitation at all, but 
o-razino- cattle here and there. 

An unexpected feature of life in some of these little 
(xulf resorts is due to the number of sea-captains one is 
apt to meet at the hotels and in the streets. They ])ut 
the little loafing-places in touch Avitli a great deal more 
of the world than the railroads introduce there, for these 
generally jolly mariners come from Norway and Sweden 
and France and Euii'land, and even from more distant 




A CORNEK IN THE LIBHAKV, BEAUVOIR 

148 



lands. The fact that you do not see their ships lends a 
little touch of mystery to their presence ; but it is a short- 
lived mystery if you attack it with the first natural ques- 
tion, for then you learn tliat their vessels are lying with- 
in shelter of the islands off shore, loading with lumber. 
This lumber they swallow up in prodigious (juantities. 
They do this in such a way as to suggest those ]ieoj)le 
whom Munchausen found on an adjacent planet to this, 
who used to open a door in their stomachs and pop in 
food for several days when they were going off on a 
journey. Just so these lumbermen swallow sections of 
forests without having them cut up to go into their 
holds, by opening a door into their stomachs, in the 
shape of a great hole in each bow, into which the long- 
tree -trunks are slid. We are apt to think of lumber 
and timber as products ])eculiar to Maine and Michi- 
gan, Minnesota and AVashington, but every one of the 
Southern States is a grand storehouse of valuable tim- 
ber, and none is greater than Mississippi. 

That part of her territory wdiicli is covered b}^ forests 
is just four times the size of Massachusetts — or more 
than twenty-one millions of acres. The reader wonders 
how that can be true of the king of the cotton States, 
since that royal rank implies a vast farming area. It is 
because Mississippi is larger than Pennsylvania by a 
thousand square miles, or nine times larger than Massa- 
chusetts. Her great agricultural development has been 
reached by denuding more than half of her surface of 
forests. 

To understand this, and the State, it is necessary to 
remember that Mississippi is divided into three longi- 
tudinal belts: 1, the Delta strip, along the Mississippi 
River; 2, the hilly belt down the middle of the State; 
and 3, the so-called " prairies," on the side next to Ala- 
bama. The Delta soil is alluvial and very rich, and is 

144 



very productive, of cotton mainly. The hillock land, 
that Avhich was until recently considered the very poor- 
est land outside of the swamps, is now the source of 
o:reat wealth, because here are o^rown the veo-etal^les 
and small fruits whose introduction is revolutionizine: 
and enriching th(^ State. It is rich also because it is 
cultivated in small holdings by white labor and by eco- 
nomical methods. We better understand how such an 
influence affects a people when we reach the prairie belt, 
now the poorest part of the State, though its soil is black 
and vegetation planted there becomes luxuriant. It is 
farmed in large plantations like the Delta land, but it 
does not flourish because these are rented out and not 
kept up by their owners. Like the Irish landlords, they 
spend their money elsewhere instead of on their land, 
as the small holder does, in fertilizers, improvements, 
and repairs. 

But while this division of the State is actual, the reader 
must now imagine all three of these belts covered by a 
vast virgin pine forest from the middle of the State to 
the Gulf. To be exact, let me say that this foi-est ex- 
tends over nearly the whole area between iVlabama on 
the east and the Illinois Central Railroad in the west, 
and between the Gulf and a line drawn across the State 
from the city of Meridian to the railroad I have men- 
tioned. This forest region is about 90 miles wide and 
180 miles long, and is in the main as beautiful as a park. 
Pine, gum, oak, and cottonwood are the trees, though 
on the Delta side cypress, ash, poplar, hickory, and gum 
are abundant. For flfty years or more this district has 
been "lumbered" wherever tlie logs could be floated 
down the many streams that all flow to the Gulf of 
Mexico, and yet it is said that but a tiny fraction of the 
valuable wood has been cut, and not even yet have the 
lumbermen been obliged to go to a distance from the 

K 14.-, 



streams. There are millions upon millions of feet of 
long-leaf pine in this region, while in the northern part 
of the State more than one-thii-d as nuich short-leaf pine 
is standing. 

Tn this great Southern district of forest a large 
amount of Western capital has been invested in lumber- 
inu', and of tlie men eno'ag'ed in the pursuit fuUv one- 
half are from the West and the North. Immense tracts 
of this woodland are held untouched for the a'reat rise 




HIOADIXli-KOOM IN THK I,Ii51!AI!Y. BKArVOII! 



in their value that must certainly follow the destruction 
of the timber resources of tlie Northwest. These Mis- 
sissippi forest lands wei'c ])ul)lic, government land, and 
the speculative corporations bought enormous tracts at 
prices that were sometimes as low as a dollar and a half 
an acre. This unjust and scandalous absorption by the 

146 



Avealtliy of that which should luive been lield for the 
people and for the enrichment of the IState aroused the 
indionation of those who watched it, and two ov tiiree 
years ago tlie peoi)le obtained Federal legislation, by 
which what remains of the land is saved for tlie })osses- 
sion of actual settlei's exclusively. Less than half of it-- 
possibly little more than a, tliird — was tlms presei've(h 
That wdiich is being cut is not only shipped to Europe, 
as I hav^e described, but it also goes in great quantities 
to the "West — to Chicago and intermediate points, and 
to St. Louis as the distril)uting-]ioint for the farther 
West. 

Down on the (xulf coast I had shown to me the tidy 
home and thrifty-looking farm of a man who was said 
to have walked into that section '• with nothing in the 
world but a shirt, trousers, and boots'' — the very sort of 
man that most of my Southern fi-iends say that tliey 
don't want as a t3'pe of the new blood they aim for in 
their efforts towards attracting immigrants. l>ut this 
man picked up a living somehow, as men of tlie stuff to 
emigrate are apt to do, and presently he had saved 
enough to buy a patch of woodland. Then he turned 
that 'into a farm, and has become a comfortable citizen, 
growing vegetables the vear round, and demonstrating 
that a man with tlie will can establish himself in the 
South in the same way in which poor men have built up 
whole Western States, and with as great individual suc- 
cess, if not greater. 

Among the places that I visited in Mississippi was 
Jackson, and there the condition of the old State House 
suggested the thought that pei'haps the rebellious sub- 
jects of old King Cotton are more interested in the pres- 
ent day than in any part of their past. Like JJeauvoir, it 
was a pitiful object of neglect. The <jld clock face on 
its front had turned into a great plate of rust, the un- 

147 



looked-for statues of Bacchus and Venus in the once 
noble lobl)y beneath the dome now stand ridiculous in a 
scene of untidiness and slow deca3^ The Senate-Cham- 




SLEEPING-KOOM IN THE LIBKAIIY, BEAUVOIl! 



ber has its roof upheld by rough trusses of raw wood, 
and the originally fine hall of the Assembly is orna- 
mented with the advertisement of an insurance coni- 
panv, the faded banner of a lodge of Confederate veter- 
ans, hung awry on one side of the Speaker's chaii'. and a 
cheap portrait that dangles threateningly overhead. 

The capital itself is a busy and a prosperous place, 
stirred by men of modern ideas and interests, who proud- 
ly show a visitor their rows of tine residences and two 
bustling business streets, their promising college, found- 
ed by a banker in the town who loves his fellow-men. 
And these leaders are fully alive to the revolution that 
is pushing the State into prosperity. The Governor's 
mansion, so strongly recalling the White Plouse at 

148 



Washington, is one of the sights of the town, but to me 
nothing was so interesting as the continual movement of 
baled cotton through the streets, and the habit the peo- 
ple have of piling it up beside the Capitol, so that one 
sees the palace of the threatened king, neglected and in 
need of general repairing, rising above the mountain of 
the bales that typifies his throne. 

Cotton-mills are not as numerous in the State as in the 
Carolinas and Georgia, and 3'et one — that at Wesson — 
is one of the finest in America. There is a yarn-mill at 
Water Vallev, and there are mills for the making of un- 
bleached cotton at Enterprise, near Meridian, and at 
Columbus. The Wesson cotton and woollen mills show 
so triumphanth^ what can be done in the South, as well as 
wherever enterprise determines to make success, that I 
wish to speak of them at length. They were founded 
in 1871, and have been so phenomenally successful as to 
give certain goods that bear their name an almost world- 
wide celebrity and rank — so successful as to increase the 
value of the stock ten dollars for one that has been 
invested in them. B}^ the reinvestment of the divi- 
dends the}^ have been brought to their present com- 
pleteness and excellence. By constantly replacing old 
machinery with that which is newer and better they 
have been made as modern as if they were equipped 
yesterday. They manufacture all classes of cotton 
goods — cotton rope, rag carpet, twines, hosiery, jean, 
wool jeans, cassiraeres, ladies' dress goods, and flan- 
nelette. They consist of three large brick buildings, 
equipped with electric lights, automatic sprinklers, and 
water-towers. The annual output of manufactured stuffs 
has been about a million and a half dollars' worth. The 
operatives number 1500, are natives of the State, and 
are all white. The commercial depression of 1893 caused 
a partial closing of the mills in August of that year, but 

14i) 



the attitude of the owners towards their work-people is 
such that no misery followed. Winter fuel and house- 
rent free were given to all the operatives, and the heads 
of the families were kept employed in order that there 
should be money for necessaries for all. It did not sur- 
prise me in hearing this to learn further that there has 
never been a labor union nor a day of what is commoid v 
known as '"labor trouble'' in Wesson. James S. llich- 
ardson, of the noted family of cotton-planters, is ])resi- 
tlent of the mills, and the directors are AV. W. Gordon, 
John Oliver, and R. L. Saunders. 

But Mississippi has many good tidings of progress 
and of approaching liberation from the cruel thraldom 
of that product in which she once led the South. Xew 
farming industries and new uses for the land are forcine^ 
themselves upon the public as well as the local attention. 
The Illinois Central llailroad, with its quick and direct 
service, is fetching sturdy Western people into the State, 
and sometimes they are leading, sometimes copying the 
more ambitious natives in the movement away from the 
exclusive growing of cotton. In Madison, in the county 
of that name, the pioneer was Dr. II. E. McKay, the 
President of the State Horticultural Society. A tlozen 
years ago he began experimenting with strawberries, 
and with such success that his little town of 100 inhab- 
itants now ships as many as five car-loads of luscious 
berries daily during a season of from four to six weeks, 
lie has 120 acres planted in strawberries, his brother. 
Dr. John McKay, has between 80 and 100, and their 
neighbors manage strawberry patches of from 15 to SO 
acres each. It was a brand-new business a dozen years 
ago, and it had to be learned ; but to-day all engaged 
in it are more than satisfied, and declare it to be far 
better than cotton-planting. I do not know whether 
the average Northern reader appreciates the importance 

150 



of experiments and examples like tliis, but to me these 
steps towards assured wealth for the South — especially 
since I know how belated they have been, and how 
slowly they are taken even yet — are most interesting. 

The Madison berries are the second to enter the mar- 
ket. The hrst are grown around Hammond, in Louisi- 
ana, where the farmers — in the same ])iny- woods soil 
that Mississippi's new trucking region consists of — began 
by raising early spring produce for the North. To-day 
they embrace their full opportunity down there in Lou- 
isiana, and actually ship produce every day, the year 
round. 1 will not ])rint tlie necessary half-page list of 
what thev grow, but it embraces all garden-truck, many 
small fruits, and much beside ; and soon after cabbages 
are ready for shipment, in December, the next year's 
full round of incessant crops begins. But to return to 
Mississippi, where the same processes Avill eventually 
bring fortunes to great communities not yet estab- 
lished, let me add that thousands of fruit-trees have 
been planted on the strawberry farms, and some are 
beginning to yield. The people mean to put their eggs 
in more than one basket. Tliey are going into trucking 
also. 

At Crystal Springs, south of Jackson, on the Illinois 
Central Railroad, a few of those AVestern people whom 
that iron highway is bringing into Mississippi are co-op- 
erating with the natives in the raising of truck. Toma- 
toes, pease, cucumbers, and beans are the chief growths, 
and the town shipped as man}' as thirty car-loads of 
"table" tomatoes in one day of last June. Li that 
montli Crystal Springs earned and got ir^350,0O0, which 
came just as the cotton-planters needed money. The 
manner in which these new agricultural methods bring 
money into the State at all seasons is one of its advan- 
tages that is of more moment than we, who live nearer 

152 



the financial centres, can easily imagine. Durant and 
Terry are other towns that are feeling this agricultural 
revolution. 

The entire middle section of the State is becoming a 
great horse - raising region, and it is said that there are 
as many horses in Mississippi as in Kentucky. This, 




SENATE-CHAM15KK AT JACK80X 



too, is the best hay section in the South, except the 
blue - grass region. Large quantities of hay are being 
shipped to Xew Orleans and to the Delta planters, who 
give M\) their lands to cotton. Bermuda and other 

ir)8 



grasses grow naturally there, but the les[)edeza, or 
Japan clover, is the best. It mysteriously appeared 
after the close of the war. It had undoubtedly been 
brought there by the Northern soldiers. Its seeds 
blow everywhere, and it has spread marvellously far 
and fast. On the poorest liill land it grows tall enough 
to mow and bale. It is preferred to any other hay by 
the cattle, and it fetches ten dollars a ton. In the 
western part of tlie State, in (/lay and Chickasaw coun- 
ties, a large number of Northern people have gone into 
the horse business. They are nuiinly raising working 
stock, such as used to be brought in from Tennessee. 
The butter and milk deartli is ended in central Missis- 
sippi. A number of dairy farms have been established, 
and the keeping of cows is becoming general. Even on 
the poorest land and among the poorest farmers pork 
and beef are being raised to insure meat for the fami- 
lies, whether cotton fetches paying or losing ])rices. 

It is thus that the South is forced to acknowledge 
that the original Plymouth plan is better than the 
damestown experiment. The Jamestown or Virginia 
idea was to grow nothing but tobacco, and then use it 
to buy everything else that was needed to support life. 
The Plymouth plan was to grow the necessaries of life 
and sell the surplus, if there was any. To-day, from 
the Norfolk (Virginia) truck farms to the truck farms 
of Louisiana, the South is paying tribute to the Yankee 
notion. She is ])rosperous wherever that is the case. 
She is otherwise wherever the Jamestown method still 
obtains. 

To be thoroughly successful the Plymouth method 
required personal industr}^ on the part of the small 
farmer at least. They are finding this out also in Mis- 
sissippi ; but to a Northern man, who believes that 
" w^ork elevates and ennobles the soul,'' it sounds verj' 

154 



funny to hear the people apologizing for what they are 
doing. Mere farm-work is considered plebeian and vul- 
gar, but they find " dairying and horticulture more re- 
fined." They say that men of education do not like to 
do with the plough and the stable, but that "you see 
o-entlemen and their sons at work in the orchards and 
berry - fields, and around Crystal Springs you may see 
a hundred young ladies of good families at work pack- 
ing fruit." That is gi'eat progress and a great conces- 
sion for the South. So long as the people work they 
will thrive, and if they sugar their lives by calling fruit- 
farmino- bv the name of ''horticulture." it does not mat- 








IJS;^"'**^^ 



governor's M-VNSION at JACKSON 

ter so long as they acknowledge the truth of Poor 
Richard's maxim that 

"He who b}' the Soil would Thrive 
Must either hold the Ploutrli or Drive." 



The rule of the Jamestown plan is broken in Missis- 
sippi but not destroyed. The cotton-planters in the 
bottom lands own between 500 and 1500 or 2000 acres 
each. They farm out these plantations to the negroes. 

155 



Each negro gets a cabin, a mule, a plough, and a little 
garden-patch free, as the tools with which to work. He 
is to plant and pick fifteen acres of cotton, and is to re- 
ceive half of what it brings. The cotton yields between 
half a bale and a bale per acre, and fetches just now $25 
a bale. The negro needs the help of his wife and many 
children to pick it. At an average return of, say, ten 
bales of cotton to fifteen acres the negro gets $125 for 
his year's work. The cotton seed brings seven to ten 
dollars a ton, so that from the sale of that he gets $35 
more. Some ])lanters grow corn for market, and others 
allow the negroes to plant a good deal of corn to live 
upon. Unfortunately the rule with the negro is to sell 
his corn before Christmas at 50 cents a bushel, and buy 
it back in February at $1 25. The negroes deal with 
the local merchants, wdio are mainly Hebrews, on the 
credit plan. They are made to ])ay two prices, and the 
Jews limit them to what it is thought their crops Avill 
bring. These merchants add about fifty per cent, for 
the hazard of poor crops, death, losses by storms, and 
whatevei". 

The negro is holding the South back in this as in 
other respects. The small white farmer can adjust him- 
self to circumstances. He can say that if cotton does 
not pay at this year's price of five cents a pound, he 
will raise more meat and corn for home consumption. 
He can also raise enough to feed what tenants he em- 
ploys. But the negro afi'ects the larger situation, lie 
is not a landlord. He must rent the land he works, and 
the average planter needs him as much as the negro 
needs the land. But when the tw^o meet, and the negro 
asks, "What are you going to pay me for working your 
land r' the planter can only reply, "Cotton," because 
corn won't sell in the first place, and in the second 
place the negro likes cotton, and understands the hand- 

156 



ling of it better than anything else that grows in the 
ground. Fiiithermore. to understand tlie situation fully, 
the reader needs to remember that there are a great 
many more negroes than whites in Mississippi. 

The Illinois Central Railroad has come into a lot of 
rich land through the purchase of a railway nearer the 
o-reat river than its main line, and it is brinofino- down a 
great man}^ Western farmers, \vho do not go there for 
their health or for the sake of the scenery, but to make 
money. They are largely from Wisconsin, Illinois, and 
Iowa. They are going into horse - raising, dairying, 
trucking, fruit-growing, and whatever will pay best, and 
they will exert a tremendous influence for prosperity 
down there. But on the hilly land of the interior, 
where the railroad influence is not at the bottom of the 
immigration, a great many new-comers are seen to try 
cotton first. They hear that they can get land for 
from three dollars to ten dollars an acre, and that they 
can raise a bale on two acres, with a chance of o-ettino- 
$4:0 for the bale. It does not work. There is too much 
cotton. It brings only five or six cents a })ound, and it 
has been observed that under eight cents the planters 
do not ])ay their way. Contrary to the Carolina expe- 
rience, the bankers of Mississippi declare that cotton 
costs seven and a half cents a pound for the raising. 
And even then '' it takes thirteen months in the year to 
raise it," as they say down there — meaning, of course, 
that before one ^year's crop is picked the planter must 
be preparing for the next. With land cheaper than 
dirt usually is, with taxes very low indeed, with a com- 
bination of soil and climate fitted for the growth of 
every product of the temperate zone, and many others 
besides, it is astonishing that the State does not fill with 
earnest, industrious bidders for the fortune that will so 
surely be theirs when the}' embrace the opportunity. 

158 



The reader may say that there must be some im))ortant 
hiiulerance, but I know of none. The Avhite people are 
hiw-abiding and hospitable, the climate is healthful, the 
heat is bv no means unendurable or such as need deter 




FOHT MASSACHUSETTS. SHIP ISLAND, MISSISSITPl 



a Northern num from goiug there, and, indeed. North- 
ern men hav(^ told me that the Northern midsummer 
heat is far more trying. Tlie oidy prol)Iem is what to 
do with the negro after the white farmers come in, but 
that will not affect any white man who goes there to 
^vork for himself. Tlie negi'o will have to learn to woi-k 
as the white man does, or — but that is his concei'U. 

l.-)9 




V 
OUR OWN RIVIERA 

WE started from New Orleans to enter the Flow- 
ery State by its back door. In New Orleans 
the peach and pear trees were throwing 
sprays of delicate color across many a view, the street 
boys were peddling- japonicas and garden roses, and in 
the woods near by the dogwood and the jasmine span- 
gled the fresh greenery with their flowers. On our way 
to the cars we read a Signal Service bulletin announcing 
the temperature in New York to be 24°, while in New 
Orleans it was 70°. And in the evening newspaper was 
word that a party of well-nurtured hoodlums in a Con- 
necticut college had snowballed an actress on the staae 
of the theatre in the college town. Such are the possi- 
bilities in a country of the magnitude of oui's, and the}" 
made as glad that we were going even farther south. 

The next day spied the train in Florida making its 
way through a tedious region of sand and pine and 
swani]) and cypress. But tiie glorious eye of day was 
blazing upon the cars, so that it turned them into bake- 
ovens, and when the suffocating passengers opened the 
Pullman windows, in swept the fine, insinuating, chok- 
ing dust of Florida in such clouds that I, who had 
started in black clothing in Louisiana, came into Florida 
looking like a miller. Indeed, I felt like that particular 
miller of the Dee about whom nobody acknowledged 
any concern. As is so often the case, the Pullman con- 

160 



tained a passenger who talked to everybody in it, and 
rendered all other speech vain and unprofitable. 

*' I'm going to get otf at Tallahassee," said he, '■' in 
order to driv^e over to Thomasville, Georgia. Better 
stop otf with me — only pretty country and only un- 
spoiled Southern town in Florida. Fact is, though Tal- 
lahassee is the capital of the State, it does not belong in 
Florida. Got pushed over the line by some convulsion 
of nature. Stop off, and you will not be sorry. The 
conductor will give you a stop-over check.''' 

The neighborhood of Tallahassee, when it came into 
view, riveted our inclination to accept this semi-public 
advice. Plantations, inviting Soutliern country houses, 
dense banks of Cherokee roses in bloom, rolling land, a 
rich chocolate soil, great trees whose foliage formed 
clouds of green — these were the objects that took the 
places of the swamps, and of the monotonous vistas of 
slender pines struggling in sand. We stopped at Talla- 
hassee, and in the main street of the picturesque and 
comatose old village we met that which attuned our 
souls for all that we were to enjoy in Florida — that set 
our thoughts in the right train. It was the regulation 
summer maiden of the North that we encountered. 
There she strode, in white kid shoes, with a white sailor 
hat on her head, ribboned with white satin. She was 
dressed otherwise in a blue sailor suit trimmed with 
white, above which appeared a pert face, all sun-dyed, 
beneatli a mass of short and wavy nut-bi-own hair. She 
was so precisely like herself as we all saw her at Narra- 
gansett Pier in the previous Septend)er that it was al- 
most possible to believe she had been walking on and on 
southward ever since, pursuing the summer like a song- 
bird, or perhaps had stopped now and tlien to linger 
with it at Asheville, Charleston, Savannah, Thomasville, 
and finally there at Tallahassee. She paused and talked, 

L Kil 



with many coquettish little graces, to a young gentle- 
man who met her on the pavement. It required but a 
little further play of fancy to imagine that he was urg- 
inc her to atteud some dance or reception, and that she 
was saying, just as she used to say every day last au- 
tumn*. "I'll o'O, but 1 can't dress, vou know. One half 
of my arms doesn't match the other half, and my face 
and my neck are at odds; I'm so shockingly sunburnt, 
you know." That vision of the summer maiden Avas all 
that was needed for an introduction to Florida. The 
maffic of it shattered our touch with the old South. It 
stood us face to face with the Xorth a-holidaying, and 
that makes the essence of life in what the hotel men de- 
light to call " the American Eiviera." 

When my companion, Mv. Smedley, and I reached our 
rooms in the cheerful hotel in the heart of the town, v/e 
found awaiting us a great shallow dish of japonica, rose, 
and violet blossoms. Having seen an even larger tray 
of flowers in the office of the house, we inquired whence 
they came, and found that they were sent by the ladies 
of the town to the ladies of the hotel. This was not 
only a pretty custom, and a jiositive ])roof that Florida 
deserves its name, but it showed that for perhaps the 
first time in our lives we were domiciled in a pleasure 
resort wherein the people liad not been demoralized by 
so strong a desire for gain that all kindlier liuman im- 
pulses were crowded out of their lives. This })leasant 
belief was strengthened when we went into the town to 
shop, and found the prices generally moderate. A horse 
and carriaji-e mav be had, with a, driver, for three dollars 
a day, aiul in a comfortable vehicle we rolled through 
the old town, noting, by its own hills and those around 
it, that it was in a rich rolling country, and by its heavy 
(Trecian- looking town houses and its cool embowered 
countrv houses that many relics of the time when it was 




'"SHE PAUi^ED AND TALKKD, WITH MANY tOQUKTl'ISH LITTLE (iUACES" 



tlie seat of a wealtliy aristocracy still remained. Of 
trees and flowers I never saw more or better in any 
country town even in England. The oaks, always the 
handsomest trees in the Sonth, were here magnificent, 
and around them ^vere mnlberries, gum-trees, magnolias, 
palmettoes, figs, China -berries, pines, and many other 
sorts of trees. Great balls of mistletoe grew on lofty 
branches, banks of Cherokee roses blossomed by the 
road-sides, the door-yards were gay with old-fashioned 
flowers, and the gardens showed manifold rows of lux- 
uriant peach and pear trees, as well as dried and faded 
banana-palms. Seeing the graves of the '' Princess C. 
A. Murat," and of her husband, "Colonel Charles Louis 
Napoleon Achille Murat, son of the King of Naples," 
in the green and white graveyard, led us to drive out to 
what is called Prince Murat's house, on the outskirts of 
the town. It was little to see — a mere one-and-a-half- 
storied frame house with a sloping roof, exterior chim- 
neys, and a broad porch. And the whole was falling 
into ruin, inhabited by a negro man and woman, and 
set in a garden wherein the weeds have all but choked 
the few ornamental plants and bushes which once 
graced the scene. 

Upon returning to town 1 learned that in truth the 
prince lived in that house only a short time, though his 
widow, who survived him twenty 3'ears, made it her 
home. Ilis true home in this country had been upon his 
plantation, a few miles from the capital. Poor man ! 
his fame even in Tallahassee has degenerated into a rec- 
ollection of his eccentricities, and he is remembered to 
have eaten crow, and to have tried to eat buzzard. It is 
also recalled that he once discovered a dye, and dyed all 
liis wife's gowns before she reached home one day ; also 
that he, for some reason, induced his slaves to eat cherry- 
tree sawdust, and was nearly the death of them all, 

164 



He deserves a far more dignified echo of his existence, 
for in his portrait on tlie walls of the town librarv he is 
seen to have been a man of intellectual and forceful 
mien, and in liis book, or rather a collection of his let- 
ters made into a book, he writes himself down as a very 
observant and clear-headed man, reflective and broad, 
proud of citizenship in this country, and able to speak of 
himself seldom, and onl}^ with modesty. Writing in 
1830-32, in the course of some remarks upon Washing- 
ton, he includes a short study of the American s'irl of 
the period, one that will not now be considered far 
amiss. He notes that " parents seldom op])ose their 
daughters in the choice of a husband ; . . . moreover, the 
interference of parents is looked upon as an act of indis- 
cretion in these matters. Nothing can be more happy 
than the lot of a young American lady from the age of 
fifteen to twenty-five, particularly if she possesses the at- 
traction of beauty (which they generally do). She be- 
comes the idol and admiration of all ; her life is passetl 
amid festivities and ])leasure ; she knows no contradic- 
tion to mar her inclinations, much less refusals. She 
has only to select from a hundred worshippers the one 
Avhom she considers will contribute to her future happi- 
ness in life — for here all marry, and, with of course some 
exceptions, all are happy." 

Another note of even wider interest the prince makes 
in these words : " It is only a few years since that waltz- 
ing was proscribed in society, and only Scotch reels and 
quadrilles were danced. From the moment of its intro- 
duction, the waltz was looked upon as most indelicate, 
and, in fact, an outrage on female delicacy. Even preach- 
ers denounced in public the circumstance of a man who 
was neither lover nor husband encircling the waist and 
whirling the lady about in his arms, as a heinous sin and 
an abomination." 

k;.-) 



'' Nobody can forget," writes the prince, "the arrival 
of the Imllet corps in New York from Pai'is. I hap})ened 
to be at the first representation. The a]ipea.ra]ice of 
dancers in short petticoats created an indescribable as- 
tonishment ; ijut at the fii'st 'pirouette." when these ap- 
])en(higes, charged with lead at tlie extremities, whirled 
round, taking a horizontal ])osition, sncli a noise was 
created in the theatre that I (piestion whether- even the 
uproar at one of Musard's carnival • bals internals ' at 
Pai'is could ecpial it. The ladies screamed out for very 
shame and left the tlieatre, and the gentlemen for the 
most part remained, crying and laughing at the ver^^ 
fun of the thing, while tluij only remarked its ridicu- 
lousness. They had yet to learn and admire aiul appre- 
ciate the gracefulness and voluptuous ease of a Taglioni, 
(^erito, and a Fanny Elssler.'" 

The time 1 spent in Tallahassee I never shall regret. 
It is a |)ure and typical Southern ca])ital, with veiT many 
landmarks and mementos of a proud ])ast in full preser- 
vation. It is not like any other ])art (»f Florida, for, in 
fact, it is a great piece of Georgia soil and landscape, 
high, wholesome, picturesque, hospital )le, and (juaintly 
old-fashioned. The climate is as warm as au}^, except 
that of the southern end of the State, and yet the face 
of nature is more like what we in the North are accus- 
tomed to and consider beautiful. 

The route from Tallahassee to Jacks(»nville is l)y way 
of pine-barrens and cypress swamps, and even in winter 
was found to be exceedingly hot and dusty, as all rail- 
way travel in the State is apt to be. So far as concerns 
wdiatever of settlement and civilization is seen, it is a 
country with the dry-rot. Everything that is in use 
seems patched up; the rest is tumbling to pieces. The 
fences are tinkered and gaping; the unpainted cabins 
are dilapidated, and patched with whatever was hand- 

166 




ON A HOTEL PORCH. TALLAHASSEK 



iest when they needed repairing ; tlie liorses or ninles 
and oxen are hitched to weather-beaten plouglis witli 
bits of rope and chain. Tn a word, the jieoplo nre la/v. 
and, as they best express it in the South, '' shiftli^ss." 

At Jacksonville, with the stopi)ing of tli(^ train, wo 
were flung into the Avatering - place life of tlu' dog-days 

107 



in the North. It was not merely the summer maiden 
tliat we found there — though her sort w^as abundant — 
but she moved amid nearly all her Northern concomi- 
tants and surroundings. Jacksonville might easily have 
been mistaken for Long Brancli in July, with its great 
liotels dluminated from top to basement, its sounds of 
dance music in all the great parlors, and its array of 
long porches crowded with ease-taking men and women 
in flannels and tennis caps and russet slippers and gos- 
samer gowns. We stopped at the well-managed Wind- 
sor Hotel, but it might have passed for the West End or 
the Ilowland, except that there were no sounds of a 
near-bv heavino; sea. The Jacksonville house exhibited 
the same bevy of young girls clustered before the clerk's 
desk — ^for all the woi'ld like those we saw at Asbur}' 
Park and Long Branch in midsummer — the same long, 
light-carpeted parlor, the apparently identical semicircle 
of scraping musicians half enclosing a piano, the same 
old ladies and plain girls in the glare of light on the 
])orclies, while the pi'ettiest girls were all in the darker 
corners and places. There were the same laughter and 
chatter, and rollicking semi -grown children; the same 
aimless but happy couples keeping slo\v -measured tread 
on the ])avements ; the frames of staring photographs, 
the nickel-in -the-slot machines, the shops full of gim- 
crack souvenirs made in Germany and New York, the 
peanuts and soda-water, the odor of perfumery, the rus- 
tle of silks, the peeping slippers — the very same ; all the 
same. 

And in the morning the chief attraction of Florida 
made itself felt as it had not done before. It was the 
heat of summer in Lent, the warm sun which blazed in 
the bedroom windows and roused at least one sleeper 
with that close, confined, sticky feeling that we all know 
too well in Juh\ It was too cool on the piazzas, for that 

168 



tropical condition obtains there which produces a breeze 
that may not be felt in the sun, and 3^et is almost chilly 
in the shade. In that warmth, wholly apart from any 
attractions of scene or sport, is the secret of the |)eopling 
of Florida by JXortherners in the wmter months, of the 
transformation of one of the United States into a pleas- 
ure-park and loafing-place during three months of each 
vear. The official records show that during those months 
the mean temperature varies, in the different parts of 
the State, between 56° and 7o° Fahrenheit. There is 
not, I am assured, any part of the State which is abso- 
lutely exempt from frost, but it is an unfamiliar visitor, 
and with the general warmth comes a royal proporticjn 
of clear days — a general average of twenty -four fine 
davs in each month between December and May in all 
parts of the State. In March the average is about 
twenty-seven days, and in April twenty-six. I held the 
common impression that the State was resorted to as a 
sanitarium ; but when, after several days in Tallahassee 
and Jacksonville, I had seen but few persons who had 
the appearance of being victims of any lung disease, I 
altered my opinion. It was the resort of invalids for 
many years, it seem.s, but those who spent their winters 
there now go to the so-called piny-woods and mountain 
resorts of Georgia and the Carolinas. 

Florida has become a resting-place for those who can 
afford to loaf at the busiest time in the year — the men 
who have '* made their piles," or organized their busi- 
ness to run automatically. As a rule, they are beyond 
the middle age and of comfortable figures. It is within 
the mark to sav that each of these men brings two 
women with him — his wife and a daughter, or a sistei' 
or a niece. I fret|uently counted the persons around 
me at the hotels in the larger resorts, and never once 
found as many men as women ; there were more often 

169 



three than two women to a man. ()f young men who 
shonkl be at work, and boys and girls who shoukl be at 
scliool, there were few to be seen. In some places, as 
in the Inff hotels at St. Auf^nstine, it struck me that the 
voung women must find it ratlier ckill where joung 
men were so few. ' 

If what is said of the present frequenters of Florida 
creates the impression that it is only tlie rich who form 
the winter colon}^ it is necessary to add that this is not 
the case. In all the large towns there are many hotels 
in which board can l)e had for two dollars a day, and in 
almost all the towns there are hotels and boarding- 
1 louses that are frecjuented by those who pay onl}^ eight 
or ten dollars a week. An unexpected ])eculiarity of 
the great watering - place is that it is growing to be 
more and more the custom for the winter visitors to 
s])end a, large part of their time in travelling. Few 
miss the great Alameda group of palatial hotels in the 
(juaint old village of St. Augustine ; many cross the 
State to the very promising })ort of Tampa, with its 
superb hotel ; others travel the erratic and the scenic 
I'ivers, visit the phosphate district, the tarpon grounds, 
the almost tropical section at Lake Worth, and as many 
as they care to of the four or five score settlements and 
resorts of more or less nott?. that lie along these routes. 
This is the thing to do in Florida, although my experi- 
ence in buying railway tickets in that State led me to 
regard it as a practice calculated to humble the ricli 
more speedily than any anarchist plan of which I had 
ever heard. 

Jacksonville is tlie busiest place in Florida, and the 
starting-point for most tours. Nearly all comers by 
rail or ship from the North i)ay toll to it. From the 
porch of the Windsor they see the first orange - trees ; 
in the streets they hear a whole choir of caged mocking- 

170 




-i*? - 



"WHILE THE PUETTIEST (UKLS WEUE ALL I.N THE DAUKI'.U 
CORNEKS" 



birds ; palinettoes, bananas, and a wealth of flowers em- 
bellish many of the views about town ; and the lazy, 
luxurious holiday life at the almost always crowded 
hotels sounds the key-note of the general spii'it of the 
winter po})ulation. The main street is fit to be called 
Alligator Avenue, because of the myriad ways in which 
that animal is ofl'ered as a sacrifice to the curiosity and 
thoughtlessness of the crowds. I did not happen to see 
any alligatoi's served on toast there, but I saw them 
stuffed and skinned, turned into bags, or kept in tanks 
and boxes and cages; their babies made into ornaments 
or on sale as toys ; their claws used as purses, their teeth 
as jewelry, their eggs as curios. Figures of them were 
carved on canes, moulded on souvenir spoons, painted on 
china, and sold in the forms of photographs, water-color 
studies, breastpins, and carvings. 1 could not, for the 
life of me, help thinking of the fate of the butTalo everv 
time I walked that street. 

The true Southern negro abounds in the city, and is 
a never ceasing source of amusement and interest. 
Among them all not any are more peculiar than the 
hackmen, who drive slowly up and down before the 
hotels, calling out to the boarders. " I'd just as lieve 
drive you as A^anderbilt," said one. '' Dere ain't no 
bars put u}) agin any one what can pay de price.'' 
Then the next one halts his team and says, in a general 
public address directed to no one in particular : " Lend 
me a dime, an' I'll pay you back or sing you a song. I 
know lots of songs, and when I open my mouth you'll 
think I either got music or delirium tremens." The 
market also is very interesting. It slightly suggests a 
corner in some old French city. The display of iish, 
vegetables, and fruit is both gorgeous and appetizing. 
On the market wharf the tourist may see a ])oliceman 
in a New York uniform, a ferry-boat from New Yoi'k 

172 



crossing the river, and a New Yorli river boat lying at 
a neigliboring pier. 

In a glance at the principal tours of the winter 
visitors to Florida the short one to St. Augustine must 
be considered first. The great Capitol at AYashington, 
the State Capitol at Albany, and the Equitable Build- 
ing in New York are the most costly houses in America. 
These were the subjects of a far greater outlay than 
the Flagler group of St. Augustine hotels, but their 
cost is not uppermost in the minds of those who spend 
much time in them. I know of no place, public or 
private, where the power of wealth so impresses itself 
upon the mind as at this group of Florida hotels. It is 
not because the owner's constant presence brings mill- 
ions to the mind, or that he is known to have made his 
own way, and is said to have brought his dinner to his 
office with him every day until he was worth a million. 
It is the spot itself — the finding of a group of palaces 
in such strong contrast with all the rest in Florida. It 
is the change from a field where the other charms are 
all natural to a mass of beauties that are made by hand. 
To live in the Ponce de Leon is as if we had been in- 
vited to stop at a royal palace. It is as if a modern 
Haroun-al-Raschid, in order the better to study his peo- 
ple, had turned his royal residence into a hotel. And, 
after all, that would be but little more unexpected than 
that a many-millionaire should use his means in this 
way. It is said of the proprietor (than wliom there is 
no more unassuming boarder in tiie building) that the 
reading which most impressed him in his youth was 
tales of Spanish affluence antl history and adventure. 
When the day came that he could build a great struct- 
ure, the Spanish types were the only ones that were in 
his mind. Upon the first crude idea of constructing 
something that should ceh3!)rate the beauties of Spanish 

17;} 



architecture grew the \)];n\ l'(>r u hotel. The after- 
thought became the piume impulse, and was allowed its 
way. 

It is said that a famous writer remarked that he had 
not the ability to describe the I^once de Leon and its out- 
look upon the luxurious court and jxirk, and opposing 
Cordova and Alcazar hotels. I see here no excuse for 
trying a hand upon it at this late day. It is its general 
effect, rather than its details, tliat charms the beholder, 
and that effect can be expressed in a sentence — it is a 
nndod}^ or a poem in gray and red and green. The 
pearl-gray walls of shell-stone lift their cool sides be- 
tween billows of foliage and masses of bright red tiling. 
The graceful towers, quaint dormer-windows, airy log- 
gias, and jewel-like settings of stained glass, like the 
palms and the f(juntains and gallei'ies, all melt, unnoted, 
into the main effect. It is all too fine for some persons, 
too dear for others, too artificial for others, and for an- 
other class not sufficiently restful. IMany find the life 
there too closely like what they left Ijehind in New 
York, or they see there the same club and business 
friends from whom they wish to get away. Al-Iiaschid 
coukl not please every one if he gave away his wealth 
and sceptre, and even his clothes. I was so perfectly 
content and thoroughly fascinated m the week I lived 
there that the place seemed all-sufficient. Yet when I 
went to another resort, and saw a green and white coun- 
try hotel in a shady grove beside a cool river, and ob- 
served the men and women in the refreshing undress of 
flannels and soft hats, I confess that my heart went out 
to the old, old joy of country rest and quiet and uncon- 
cern. 

But, for a time, it was pleasant to elbow the rich and 
watch the fashionable, to see the gosvns and turnouts, to 
hear the small talk, and now and then to have a tete-d- 

1:4 



tete with a dressy woman, and to find that slie could re- 
peat the pretty pratthngs of her babe recorded in the 
hist of a granchna's letters ; or to sit with a very wealthy 
man, as I ditl, and hear him exclaim : '' Don't lay any 
stress on wealth ; there's nothing in it. I have it, and I 
tell yon I would rather have a college education and 
enough to live in plain comfort tlian to hold on to my 
millions. I only give away my surplus. All the world 
seems banded to get it away from me, and it does me 
little good. Give your boys an education ; you will be 
kinder than if you gave them riches." 

This was an unlooked-for note to be sounded in a iiouse 
wliere a woman and her lady friend and maid were pay- 
ins; §31* a (lav for rooms and meals ; where an Astor 
and his bride had paid the same sum per day during a 
week of their honey-moon ; ^vhere one lady took a room 
solely for her tru]iks at $lo a day ; and where an eco- 
nomical young woman told me that she was filling iier 
mother's closets and her own with dresses, while the 
mother put her things on the chairs. " Mamma has had 
her day, you know," said the maiden, "and she doesn't 
care.'' 

Thei'e was one little l"»arty that occupied three bed- 
rooms, a bath-room, and a- parlor, taking up a wliole 
corner of the house on the ground-fioor, whose bill at 
the hotel might easily have been $75 a day. And in all 
these instances the extras are lost sight of — the s5 to 
the head waiter, the §2 or ^'i a week to the waiter at 
table, the fees to the bell-boys and the ice-water boy and 
bootblack. I noted, though, that these minor expenses 
are variously met. In modest Jacksonville I saw a man 
meet them chea[)ly, and yet with a flourish. He was 
leaving. '• How many boys are there here f he asked. 
'^ Nine, sir." '' Then call them all up— all of them," said 
tlie man, and he handed to each one a dime. It was done 

17() 



so that it seemed as if he mi^'ht be o'ivino^ double eagles in- 
stead of dimes. I doubt whether the High Chief Ahiio- 
ner of England hands out shillings in the Queen's name 
to poor old women with more of an air. Then, again, I 
was in one hotel in Florida where a rich man brought his 
own wines, and actually sent his own coffee into the 
kitchen to be brewed. And in 3^et another hotel I was 
asked to swell a purse that was being raised for the cook. 
But, despite all this, a modest and contented man may 
live in Florida, and even hobnob with millionaires at the 
Ponce de Leon, upon $6 per diem. 

Out in the fairjlike court of that most beautiful 
hotel, where the lights in the windows met the lights lit- 
tered on the ground beneath the greener}^ I heard a gen- 
tleman and maiden approach and meet and actually solve 
the problem of the per])etual summer girl's existence. 

''We came down to Old Point Oomfort after ieavinff 
Newport," said she, " and then we went to Asheville. 
Then we were at New Orleans on riia/'(Ji (jruf^y 

" And when do you ever go home V' the man inquired. 

''Oh," said the girl, in surprise," why, we always 
spend Christmas at home." 

There was also a rich mother who, talking in the 
presence of her daughter, said to me that she held very 
old-fashioned notions about young girls. "I still be- 
lieve in love,'' said she. " I think a girl should marry 
only for love, and that she had better choose an ambi- 
tious, promising young man with success ahead of him 
than mere wealth with an elderly man or a brainless 
mone}' - bag. Such marriages are the most unhap])y 
ones. Ah, me ! I am sure if I were a young girl I 
could be happy in a tin}^ house in a village if I were 
with the choice of my heart." 

The daughter listened stiiHy at iirst. Then her face 
beamed, and a ripple of laughter escaped her. 
-M 177 



"•Mamma," said she. '" your love-in-a-cottage ideas are 
out of style. 1 am thoroughly modern — up to date— A'>' 
<le .siecle. Your notions are pretty, but t/ic// <Joiit (jo^ 

Then the maiden turned to me, as being one who 
could sNMupathize with her, she thought, and said: "I 
want to live in one of the world's capitals, where they 
have grand opera, and miles of swell carriages, and a 
ilistinguished societ}', and — and — where something hap- 
pens every night. I am dreadfully miserable when 
there's nothing going on. ]\ramma. do vou remember 
the night in Vienna last winter when we neither of us 
knew what on earth to do f' 

To sum up the impressicm St. Augustine made upon 
me, it seems that nearly every taste may be grati- 
Hed tliere. The cpiaint old city, with some streets that 
are too narrow for })avements, and a score of ancient 
houses that would be notal)le anywhere else, is in itself 
a joy. The fishing is good ; the sailing on the almost 
constantly sunlit, ever-breezy river is better. The driv- 
ing and horseback rides are pleasant ; there are coun- 
try walks and orange groves. The old fort is never less 
than picturesque, and it is ]irized jjy lovers almost above 
a certain leaty terrace at West Point. There are tennis 
and bathing and shopping. Concerts and dances and 
exhibitions are frequent. All these and more are for 
the active. For the indolent and idle there are the log- 
gias and the lobbies of the big hotels, with music every 
evening, and a gi'and panorama of life all the time. 

Whoever likes all this can have it over again, with 
some new conditions, at Tampa, where ]\Ir. II. I>. Plant, 
the ex])ress and steamship operator, maintains another 
o-rand and enormous hotel — jVloorish in design in this 
instance. Its beautiful and often historic furniture, fine 
pictures, gay crowds, very notable table, excellent music, 
and Gulf -side views make it easily the second of the 

178 



leading resorts of Florida. Here, too, nature is adorned 
b}^ artistic gardening, and the hours may be spent in 
riding, dancing, fishing, boating, and loafing. " The 
Inn," above the water, on a grand pier that is at once 
the terminus of a railway and steamship line, is not too 
far distant to be easily reached, and visitors there enjoy 
fine fishing, good fare, music, and delightful air and 
views. The town of Tampa, across the river from the 
great hotel, should be visited, not only because it is a 
historic spot and the seat of a notable cigar industry, 
but because it is predicted that it will become a great 
port for the shipment of the future phosphate yield and 
of those other products of the State which seem prom- 
ising. 

A very pleasant journey which no Florida tourist 
should miss is that up tlie St. Johns liiver by boat 
from Jacksonville to Sanford. The steamer C'ltij of 
JacTiSonr'dle and her capain, William A. Shaw, are 
among the very best of their kinds, and whosoever ac- 
companies them will find by the time the pretty part of 
the river is reached, above Palatka, the passengers will 
have been brought together into something like a fam- 
ily circle, on good terms with one another, and with the 
captain as the recognized head and well-spring of con- 
stant entertainment. He is a salt-water sailor, and has 
often taken his frail-looking but really stanch boat to 
New York and back ujion the ocean. The recollection 
of these venturesome deep-water journeys lingers upon 
the steamboat in the uniform of the master, the ringing 
of a ship's bell to note the passing hours, and in the 
maintenance of a captain's table in the dining -hall, 
whereat the prettiest ladies and the most distinguished 
men find ])laces. Far from carrying a trumj)et through 
which to bellow his orders, Captain Shaw adopts what 
I may call a confidential course with Iiis subordinates. 

180 



The t^yo black pilots, working together at the wheel like 
double song-and-dance men, leave the windows of their 
house open to catch his softest tones, and soft tones are 
all they ever get, even when he swears at them. " Stop 
port," he says, lightly, over his shoulder. '* Back port. 
Start both engines. Hook her up. Stop both." It is 
the perfect way of managing a business, and one gath- 
ers the thouglit that if his boat were in a hurricane at 
sea, the passengers would never hear any other tone in 
the captain's voice than that in which he asks the near- 
est lady to him at his table whether she will not help 
herself to the celery. 

The one apparent purpose of all who journey by boat 
to Florida is to see alligators, and to keep account of 
the number they have seen, as desperate Indians in yel- 
low-covered books tote up tlie sum of the scalps they 
have lifted. At first the St. Johns Iliver is of the broad, 
type of Floridian streams — a wide expanse of fretted 
blue walled in tamely with banks of low vegetation. 
There are only two types, that and the tortuous narrow 
sort, running like leafy lanes in cramped ribbons, hedged 
close by trees. It is when the St. Johns is compressed 
and squeezed until it wriggles like a handed eel that 
the search for "gators begins. I had never seen a wild 
alligator at large when I made the voyage, and, to 
tell the truth, I had seen so many others like me, and 
such signs of a general slaughter of the saurians, their 
babies, and even their eggs, that I fancied I might leave 
Florida with the luck of one who goes to Dakota to 
get a shot at a buffalo. But I was wrong. iS'ot all 
the alligators are killed yet. tliough that consummation 
is not far oflf in the older parts of Florida. When we 
came to the narrow end of the river we saw plent}^ 
of the amphibians, and discovered also that they are 
apparently the only things that induce the captain 

181 



to raise his voice and to l)otray an inward excite- 
ment. 

'' Alligator on the left bank! Quick I" he shouted to 
all the [)asseni!,ers. •" Alligator — big one — on the left 
Ijank, close ahead I" 

Sure enough, there was the huge lizard like animal 
upon the low bank, between the water and the trees, 
where lu' had been Ijasking nntil the approach of the 
boat aroused him. Already, with a snakish motion, he 
was moving towards the river, his head sweeping in one 
direction, and his thick strong tail in the other. There 
was time to see that he was ten feet long, and to won- 
der how the captain detected a thing so nearly the color 
of the earth it rested u])on, when, with a graceful giant 
wriggle, the beast sli])})ed into the river and showed us 
only a black snout and two bumplike eyes rippling the 
surface of the stream. 

There were some ])ersons among the passengers who 
all but raved with delight over the beauty of the scen- 
ery in tlie narrow part of the river. Pretty it is, but 
not extremely beautiful, and the extravagant ex})ressions 
of those who iind extreme beanty where others see only 
taraeness, or, at the ntmost, mere prettiness, inspire 
compassion for all who live where nature is ill-favored 
or tedious, as on the plains, for instance. The St. Johns 
was here a pretty winding stream, curving amid more 
or less dense growths of oak, cypress, and palmetto. 
Spanish-moss hung its greenish-gray tails n])on many of 
the trees, and augmented the strangeness of the scen- 
ery ; f(jr strange it would seem to any American from 
beyond the few States that bordei' the Gulf of Mexico. 
It got its prettiness from the fresh new green that nat- 
ure was lavishing upon the trees and the undergrowth. 
So narrow ^vas the stream that the boat was seen to 
push the water ahead of it, and to suck a great billow 

1S2 




UANCE AT TIIK I'OXCR DK LEON 



along behind it — a billow that crashed upon the low 
banks and hurried the cows ashore, the buzzards to 
Hight, and the turtles and alligators off their resting- 
])laces. The experience suggested steamboating on some 
crooked narrow route like Pearl Street in New York ; 
l)ut sometimes the loops in the stream were so sharp 
tiiat steamers making the same course appeared to be. 
and were, going in op])osite directions. The turtles 
"were amusing. Sometimes half a dozen would drop 
from a ])rojecting log to fall u]ion their backs and 
scramble wildly into correct positions. Lazy and beau- 
tiful ci'anes were seen at times, and the boat passed 
many buzzard roosts, where the great uglj'^ birds were 
seen stalking awkwardly on the eartli, or roosting like 
turkeys on the tree limbs. I saw eleven alligators, 
many of them very huge. One favored me with an 
exhibition of his pedestrianism by turning into the 
woods instead of the water. It was worth seeing. lie 
lifted his head and six-sevenths of his tail above the 
ground upon ungainW legs that stood out from his body 
almost like a spider's limbs. Then he walked as if he 
had not learned how. The customar}' man Avith a gun, 
and with a general and all-embracing ambition to mur- 
der something, had come upon the boat to kill an alli- 
©•ator. This he was forbidden to do, and I think I am 
right in saying that from no steamboat running in Flor- 
ida is shooting now permitted. The ca-})tain explained 
Avhy this was when he said, "If passengers were allowed 
to shoot, they would l)e apt to alarm or anger the peo- 
]>le ashore, and some of the crackers "would be sure to 
turn and send a fusillade of buckshot into the boat.'" 
Those who have followed my ex])erieiices in other parts 
of the South will be interestetl in this further jiroof of 
the fact that steamboating there is not unlike managing 
a travelling target for buckshot. 

1S4 



I have spoken elsewhere of the bhick laborers on the 
Sonthern boats, and have put stress upon the fact that 
I never saw white men woi'k as hard as these negroes 
do, urged constantly as they are by the white mates of 
the vessels. But the lal)or I saw performed on the 
]\[ississippi and on the l)ayous in Louisiana was feeble 
beside that which was obtained from the crew on this 
St. Johns River steamboat. The negroes on this boat 
were very much su])erior to the dull eyed, shambling, 
and stolid haiids of the other Southern States. These 
were comparatively fine fellows, full of ambition and 
energy, with intelligence quickening in their faces, well 
clad, and, I think, less given to demoralizing holiday 
habits than the others. I never saw any men work so 
hard. The}" moved the freight on those heavy small- 
wheeled trucks that are in use at all railway stations, 
and they literally Hung these vehicles and themselves 
up and down the steep gang-planks at each landing. 
The}^ never walked. They ran, whether they were 
going loaded or I'eturning light. They slid down 
the gang - ])lanks like men on an ice slide, and they 
bounced up the sharp incline with such force that it 
seemed a miracle that saved the heavy trucks fi'om 
breaking apart. The hollow iron hull of the steamer 
roared like a druiu as these men raced their loads over 
the deck, not merely for a few minutes, but sometimes 
for an hour, or for hours, at a time. Perspiration shot 
from the men's faces, and their half-bared breasts shone 
with moisture. Their pride in their strength and quick- 
ness was manifest; with grinning faces and sparkling- 
eyes they kept up the tension of their utmost effort. 
To be sui'e, trunks flew about like cannon-balls now and 
then, men fell down, and trucks were let fly like batter- 
ing-rams, but the double line of racing, straining labor- 
ei's, coming and going at full speed, was never broken 

IS.-) 



while there was freight to move. If there are white men 
of the laboring- kind who can be hired to work as these 
negroes do, I can only say that I shall not believe it 
until I see them. In the truei' Southern States (for the 
motive spirit in Florida is imported from the Xorth) I 
digested the axiom that ''a negro and a mule work bet- 
ter tlian a white man and a horse if they are ])ushed."' 
but in Florida I improved the saying by leaving out the 
mule, and entering this note in my book: ''The negro 
laborei* is at least as good as a. white man if managed wise- 
ly." I suspect that if I were to spend another season 
in the South I would recommend that all the present 
steamboat mates be discharged, and that gentler men 
be put in their places. The very qualities that cause 
them to he chosen to sujierintend black labor a])})ear to 
me to be the ones that limit tlie result of that labor. I 
am Avrong, in all ])robability, because the S(Tuth knows 
tiie negro, and, in his ])lace, admires him. lie in turn 
loves the South and his I'elation to it. Nevertheless, in 
Florida 1 saw the best work done, and there the typical 
mate and his methods were replaced by phun business 
principles reared upon a l>asis of kindliness. 

The return trip on the St. Johns bi'ings the tourist 
through some })leasing parts of the river at night ; l)ut 
not all of its beauties are lost, for the boat carries a 
powerful electric search -light, Avhose glare is often 
thrown upon the shores. (Jne becomes familiar with 
these powerful lights after a little travelling on the 
Southern rivers, but it is difficult to conceive that any 
one ever could tire of their weird and s])lendid effect 
upon nature. Xow it is an orange gi'ove of softly 
rounded trees that is thrown before the vision as on a 
stage canvas ; now a pretty villa is materialized out of 
the darkness, a green and white cottage, upon whose 
porch men and women are surprised as they woo the 

186 



cooling, calm night; anon a dense and tangled cypress 
swamp, whose tree limbs bear startled tnrke^^s instead of 
vegetable fruit, leaps into the cold white light ; and at 
another time a village wharf is thrown upon the black 
curtain of the night. The knots of men and women, the 
yellow lights, the sentimental pairs in nooks that had 
been shaded from the lamp-lights, the drowsy negroes 
prone upon tlie boards, the white sheds, and the leafy 
backgrountl of the village trees — all flash into sharp 
detinition, such as daylight could not augment. As il- 
lustrating the companionship which grows up between 
the captain and the passengers, I made a note of this 
bit of dialogue, that sounded upon the darkness aboard 
the boat while the captain was Hashing the search-light 
here and there for our edification : 

"■ Now," said he, " we are hugging the other shore 
quite close. I'll light it up and show you." 

''Oh, ca])tainl"" said a lady, ''don't — if it's being- 
hugged.'' 

But the most instructive result of unconscious eaves- 
dropping on that voj^age was a snatch of conversa- 
tion between a woman and her husband earlier in the 
day : 

" I wish we could go ashore at Palatka," said the 
wife, " to get some cakes or pie, and figs and dates." 

" Why ! The meals are good on the boat." 

" Oh, I hate steamboat eating ; it's worse than hotel 
food. I'm getting really sick. Just cakes or pie '11 do 
me now." 

" It's curious," said the husband, as if announcing the 
result of much reflection. '' When folks has been away 
from home about so long, their stummicks gets out of 
order, and nothing '11 do 'em but plain home cooking. 
That's the way it is with me, anyhow. I want to go 
home soon as I kin — don't you :' They must be a bak- 

188 



ei'v at some of these here towns. Let's get off aiul see 
what we kin git.'' 

The Ockiawaha trip is, next to a stop in St. Ano-us- 
tine, the chief sensational featnre of a tour of Florida, if 
one niav rate the attractions of the reoion accordino- as 
one heare them talked about by those who are "doino-" 
the State. The Ockiawaha is ofteuest spoken of as the 
crookedest river in the State, but it is in reality merely 
the narrowest of the many very crooked rivers upon 
\vhich one may travel by steamboat. Crooked rivers 
twisting between scalloped banks of verdure are far too 
numerous for it to be ligiitly said which bears off the 
palm for this sort of eccentricity, and these streams are 
so nearly alike that whoever makes a trip upon one or 
two of them may properly flatter himself that he knows 
about them all. However, the Ockiawaha experience is 
by far the most peculiar, because on that stream the 
little steamers are actually i-aked by the branches of 
the trees, because the part of the journey made in the 
night-time is illuminated in an old-fashioned way bv 
bonfire-light, and because the trip begins (or ends) at 
Silver Spring, with a view of a mysterious and beautiful 
freak of nature in the form of a full-fledged I'iver burst- 
ing out of the earth. 

The tourist attends the perpetual birth of a river of 
crystal-clear w^ater, coming no one knows whence, and 
})urged in the journey. Some persons have thrown old 
cans and bits of tin into the translucent dejiths of this 
strange fountain, and these glisten and gleam and take 
on the appearance of silver and of mother-of-pearl as one 
looks down- upon them from above. If it is true that 
here De Soto fancied he had found the fabled fountain of 
youth, it will remain a matter of eternal regret that he 
did not see those old cans and bits of tin, for they not 
only emphasize the clearness of the water, but are the 

189 



chief objects of interest and observation in the localit3\ 
The water has a bluish tinge, as pale as the tone of a 
Montana sapphire, and in its deptlis the tourists see its 
denizens jiui-suing their daily task of running away from 
the boats that affright them. Turtles and gar -fish, 
trout, and other swimmers are thus observed as one sel- 
dom has a chance to see them outside of an aquarium. 

The Ocklawaha is met at the end of a nine-mile run 

through this avenue of liquid sapphire, and since I could 

not by any effort describe its attractions so well as I 

heard them set fortli by a rustic Western man on the 

Windsor hotel porch in Jacksonville, I will repeat what 

he said : " It's a leetle the derndest river I ever saw," 

he began. '' It winds and twists and curves and turns 

like nothing' else in the world, and wlien vou'vc been 

all over it, from Palatky to Silver Springs, and have 

been travelling a da3'time and a night-time, you take 

the cars and go back to wliere you started from with a 

ride of fifty mile. TJie fare is seven dollars one way 

and five dollars to come back, but there ain't no way of 

taking the five -dollar ride first, and then skipping the 

rest. They give you good eating — strawberries and 

short-cake — oh, my ! it ain't l)ad, I tell you. You get 

three meals on the trip. There's only room for thirty 

passengers, so you better start at Palatky, and be sure 

and get a berth, else niebbe you won't get no place to 

sleep. But the boats ain't so dern little neither. They're 

big enough to choke up the river, I'm a-tellin' you. 

Many's the time the boat rubs up agin the bank, and 

the branches of the trees come slatting along the sides, 

and a-breaking the windows, and a-littering the whole 

concern with broken branches. If you are lookin' out. 

vou won't see no place for the boat to go, the curves is 

so sudden. 

''Well, I'll tell you just iiow she twists. The two 

190 



boats meets at al)out seven o'clock. Well, seven o'clock 
come, an' there we was; so the capt'n begin to toot his 
whistle for the other boat. By that time we was light- 
ing our way with a big iron vessel full of blazing pine 
knots atop of the pilot-house, which has an iron roof, 
so's not to catch lire. i3at, between you and me, you'd 
think she was afire, and that the whole forest was afire 
also, or going to be every minute — that there pitch-pine 
does make such a dernation blaze. And it's ghostlike, 
too; sending the light fur an' wide, and blazing up the 
whole surroundings light as day, with black shadows 
a-dancin' wherever you set your eyes. It's worth seein', 
now, I'm a-tellin' you. Well, the capt'n he was a-tootin' 
his whistle, and there was the woods just howlin' with 
the ache-o of the noise. Pretty soon we heard the other 
boat whistle, and we just had to hunt a hole lively for 
to let her pass. You see the river ain't more than twen- 
ty-five feet wide some places — 'tain't wider than one 
boat — leastwise, it only spares six inches at one spot. 
Well, we found a dent in the woods, and we tucked in 
an' tied uj) to a tree and waited. Pretty soon I seen 
tlie other boat a-sloshin" up to us. I could see her 
thromdi the trees, and I'll swear she warn't more'n two 
or three rod off by land. Well, sir, she must have been 
that many mile off by water, for it was a good sixteen 
minutes before she come splashin' by us. I never see 
nothing like it in my life." 

The most extended vibration of the restless mass of 
winter travellers in Florida is up and down the Indian 
Kiver. The starting-point for this journey is Ormond, 
on the Halifax, and in all Florida I saw nothing more 
])icturesque or alluring than the hotel and its surround- 
ings at that place. Going from iSt. Augustine, the ma- 
jor part of the short journey is througli the usual hot, 
dusty, and monotonous ])ine- barrens, which make trav- 

193 



elling by train in Florida almost unendurable. A few 
notable orange groves displaying- fruit and flower side 
by side, and weighting the atmosphere with a heavy but 
delicious otlor, give a quarter of an hour's relief at the 
outset. But ten minutes before Ormond is reached the 
scenery changes with startling suddenness, and the piny 
woods end and the ])almetto groves begin, as if nature 
had drawn an invisible and narrow line between the 
temperate and the tropic zones at right angles across 
the railroad track. Strange rather than beautiful is the 
sight of these unfamiliar trees; and the traveller, as he 
looks out upon them, is apt to think again, as he so 
often has occasion to do in the Floral State, that beyond 
its chief charm of una])t warm weather tiie allurements 
of the State to the average visitor from the rest of the 
Union consist in the novelty of his surroundings far 
more than in any other charms it possesses. These 
palmettoes scarcely can be said to grace any view, but 
they render many a vista interesting by their peculiar- 
ity. They save themselves from utter tediousness by 
having some of their trunks bent into serpentine curves, 
while others remain thatched with the pretty patterning 
made by the joints of former and lower branches. The 
trees themselves are ugly because they are ill-fashioned. 
Their tops are too small for their trunks, and make 
them look like exaggerated mops — or as a broomstick 
would look with a woman's bonnet on top of it. Artists 
often greatly improve upon nature in their pictures of 
palmettoes by drawing them with noble umbrageous 
tops, such as the finer varieties of the palm, not seen in 
our country, possess. 

The crackers call the remnants of old branches of 
former years " boot -jacks," and have a still more sur- 
prising name for the palmettoes themselves. AVhen I 
was at the Ormond I heard a Floridian praising the 
N 193 



artistic work of a remarkable New England woman 
who was the house-keeper of the hotel, and who freshly 
decorated the public rooms and porches of the great 
house every morning. " She puts a cabbage-leaf on the 
ceiling, or sprays of fern on the sash curtains, or a cab- 
bage-leaf on a wall — and the effect is splendid," said 
he. I innocently ventured the remark that I had never 
considered a cabbage as a decorative subject ; and the 
cracker replied, with a laugh : " Ah ! I forgot ; you don't 
understand. 'Cabbage' is what we call the palmetto 
down here." 

But to return. Suddenly the pine -barrens end, and 
the tourist sees regiments of palmettoes, or thickly 
massed platoons of them, guarding swampy hammocks 
of cj'press and oak bearded with moss. Then just as 
unexpectedly the landscai)e breaks and the Halifax 
River appears — a wide blue arm of the sea, at whose 
edges the advancing forests liave halted. A white 
bridge spans the noble sheet of water, and at its far- 
ther end is seen the Ormond, whose flags and towers 
and galleries peep out above and between the thick 
foliage that forms its shady antl picturesque retreat. 
It is well worth a visit, not only because it is well kept, 
and continually filled with a lively and select company, 
but because it is the seat of a New Enghmd colony in 
the heart of Florida. One of the proprietors, nearly all 
the employes, and many of the boarders are of those 
Avho regard Boston as the seat of learning and the hub 
of ]H'ogress, The waiter-girls in the dining-room sup- 
ynivt an air which begets the suspicion that after the ta- 
bles are cleared they retire to their chambers to enjoy 
an hour with Browning, or, at least, to catch up with 
their Chautauquan obligations. The possibihty that 
any of them were among the shadowy couples I met 
on the moonlit road to the sea-beach back of the hotel 

194 



is a thought of which I was ashamed when it occurred. 
Those couples I What a sanctuary for Cupid's victims 
is that white sand road to the ocean at Ormond ! Ahead 
of me that night I saw a swaying line of bodies, each 
of which appeared like one absurdly thick personage. 
AVhen my footfall sounded near one of these forms it 
would slowly separate into two distinct objects, between 
whose shapes the night Hght shone broadly; and then, 
if I turned and looked back (guiltily), I saw a pair of 
arms appear, contrariwise, and cross and draw together, 
and the two figures melted into one again, as if in an- 
ticipation of that composite blending of individualities 
which nature's law ordains in a certain blissful state. 
But there was scant time on tliat dim road to pursue 
even so pretty a thought. In another hundred yards I 
came upon another composite, and turned it into two — 
though still with but the single thought that I could not 
liurry by too quickly to please them. 

It was quite appropriate in a typical JSTew England 
colony to find some such novelty as a perpetually heated 
urn of hot water in the hotel office for the use of those 
with whom what one of the guests called " the hot-wa- 
ter craze" is not yet grown cool. It Avas not due to 
Xew England influence, though, that the resources of 
the hotel were strained in providing sufficient men to 
take part in two sets of the Lancers. The feat would 
not be attempted in many Floridian resorts. When I 
took my first meal at the Ormond I counted fifty-one 
women and sixteen men around me at the tables — 
rather an undue proportion of males, I thought. The 
fishing is profitable there, and weak -fish, sheepshead, 
channel-bass, cavaille, and other fishes are plentiful, the 
weak-fish being of a temper to take either fly or minnow 
bait, and the sport remaining active by night as well as 
day. Much of the region around Ormontl was once cut 

195 



up into great plantations, but the Seminole war caused 
their abandonment, and one of these great sugar farms 
now serves as a show-place — not as a model farm, but 
as a jungle of dense and apparently primeval luxuriance. 
All over where the fields were, over the canals and 
ditches, the forgotten slave quarters, and the still ap- 
parent ruins of the work buildings, grows a rank and 
lush verdure curious to see, and so thick that the road 
through it has tlie character of a tunnel, whose round 
farther end lets in a circle of daylight as the barrel of 
a telescope would do. 

The place is known as " the Hammock," a term which 
is necessarily in very common use in Florida, since it 
describes a constantly recurring feature of nearly every 
district in that countrv. The word does not signifv 
what we mean either by the term hammock or by the 
word hummock. Hammock, as it is used in Florida, 
serves to characterize fertile soil, not l>y reference to 
the dirt itself, but to what grows in it. the custom in 
Florida being to look up at the trees on a bit of land, 
instead of down at the earth, in order to determine the 
quality of the soil. Wherever there is a dense forest, 
swamp, or jungle growth, the place is called a ham- 
mock, and the term is variously qualified to suit differ- 
ing conditions 1)V such prefixes as higli, low, gra3^ shell, 
marl, mulatto, hickory, live-oak, and cal)bage. 

The Indian River is by far the longest one of a series 
of inland salt-water courses which lie along the east 
coast close to the ocean. Six miles of marsh and three 
of dry land are the only obstacles now in the way of an 
inland boat journey from St. Augustine to the end of 
the series below Lake Worth, almost at the southern 
end of Florida. From Ormond, on the Halifax, to Port 
Orange, eleven miles, the way is broad and comparative- 
ly uninteresting ; but below Port Orange the course is 

1% 



choked with islands covered by black mangrove - trees. 
Here is fine pasturnge for myriads of bees, and the api- 
aries that are seen there show honey-gathering to be a 
leading industry. Here it is that we trace to its source 
the proverb that "■ oysters grow on trees in Florida," for 
it is to the half-uncoveretl roots of the mangroves that 



'lim' 




AN OLD BIT OF ST. AUCiUSTINE 



the bivalves cling like barnacles on a derelict hulk at 
sea. The mangrove is the island-maker of the region. 
A reef forms, debris catches upon it, the mangrove 
springs up, its roots form a crib, more fiotsam catch(>s in 
and around them, and as the tree grows it kecjis lifting 
up the material around it, until an island results. The 

197 



Hillsborough River, as this second link is called, is 
merely a channel winding among these queer islands, 
and broadening now and again into pools that are no 
Hatter than the country around them. By the Haul- 
over Canal, at a point where the Indians found a "car- 
ry" or portage, access is had to the Indian River in 
the neighborhood that gave the first fame to Florida 
orano:es. This great inlet, banded to the sea, antl also 
fed by rivers from the mainland, holds a straight c(Kirse 
of 1-12 miles to Jupiter Inlet, and being wide every- 
where except at the long reach called the Narrows, 
attains a breadth of more than three miles in places. 

The trip thi'ough the Narrows is the most enjovable 
part of the voyage to very many persons. But over all 
the journey the flocks of unfamiliar birds, the slowly 
changing character of the vegetation as it takes on more 
and more of a tropical nature, the Hashing phosphores- 
cence of the water, the occasional sight of a steamer s 
rigging across the reef that parts the river and ocean, 
and, more than all, the clear skies and unusually golden, 
sunny weather, are all charming novelties to the tourist. 
At Jupiter Inlet is found Captain VaiTs floating hotel— 
an old steamboat that serves well as a boardmg-house, 
and tliat entertains not only fishermen, but many ladies 
who come with them. Beyond, the termination of the 
tour at Lake Worth is made by what is called the " ce- 
lestial railway system," so called because it starts at 
Jupiter and passes stations called Juno and Mars. The 
numerous country houses of winter I'esidents at and near 
the lake-side prove it to be as charming a resort as it 
ap})ears to the eye. Here the cocoa-palm flourishes, and 
every landscaj^e is far more tropic in apj)earance than 
those of northern Florida. It is on Pitt's Island, at the 
head of the lake, that one may see the possibilities of 
that climate, not only because Mrs. Pitts came to Flor- 

198 



ida expecting to die, and yet remains a comely and vig- 
orous factor in the world, but because she and her hus- 
band cultivate almost every semi-tropical fruit that will 
grow there. JNIr. and Mrs. Pitts, unlike the average 
agriculturist, who despoils nature ruthlessly wherever 
he calls upon it to support him, have religiously left the 
most beautiful noolcs and bowers that they found for 
the pleasure not only of their boarders, but of the ex- 
cursionists who freely and frequently visit the island. 
This island was once a pelican i^oost, and owes its won- 
drous fertility to that fact. I have heard it spoken of 
by travellers as " the most picturesque spot in Florida," 
though one must have seen all the others to say that 
fairly. There is excellent fishing for very many kinds 
of fish at the inlets and in the lake, and the country 
around offers good spoi't with the gun. In addition to 
the private residences, there are hotels at Lake Worth 
and at Palm Beach. I should have said in its place 
that there are many pleasant stopping-places along the 
route from Ormond to Lake Worth, such as Daytona, 
Titusville, Rock Ledge, and others. 

Lake Worth is east of the Everglades, and southeast 
of the great lake Okeechobee — a fact that sugu'ests a 
mention of the stupendous task that Mr. Hamilton Dis- 
ton, the well-known Philadelphian, lias undertaken in a 
region reaching far to the north and west of the lake. 
A study of the character of the southern centre of Flor- 
ida and of its lakes and watercourses led him to believe 
that by a series of canals a great territory could be 
drained and made useful agriculturally. Starting with 
the great lakes near Kissimmee City, he has dredged 
out canals that connect them with one another and with 
Lake Kissimmee, which in turn sends its waters into 
Okeecliobee by way of the Kissimmee Kiver. P)y an- 
other canal he connects Okeecliobee with the Caloosa- 

199 



hatchee Eiver, emjotying into the Gulf of Mexico. Tliis 
work lias so far progressed that the northerly lakes have 
already been lowered eight feet and seven feet, in sep- 
arate instances, and an appreciable diminution of water 
in Okeechobee has been brought about. This drainage 
from the lakes implies the reclamation of a great area 
of neighboring land, on some of which the confident con- 
queror of nature has already established rice and sugar 
plantations, with a refinery of the first rank in connec- 
tion with the last-named industry. The land that has 
been recovered is described as exceedingly rich, being 
covered with a heavy deposit of decayed vegetable 
matter. 

Between Okeechobee and Ju])iter Inlet, and thence 
deep into the Everglades, are found such of the Semi- 
nole Indians as remain. Their number is variously es- 
timated at from 250 to 1200 souls, and I fanc\^ that the 

latter fio^ures are more nearly correct. Thev are de- 
cs ^ ^ 

scribed as fine men and women pliysically. They pole 
about the waterways in dugouts, and for a living fish, 
hunt, grow sugar-cane, a few cereals and vegetables, and 
collect the skins of the otter, deer, and bear. Some of 
them read and write, and many of them have rescued 
white men who have become lost in the interminal)le 
mazes of the grassy and island -cluttered Everglades. 
West of Okeecholjee on the Gulf coast is the famous 
Charlotte Harbor, the seat of the sport of tarpon-fish- 
ing. This huge and gamy fish, the capture of which is 
the supreme delight and ambition of all salt-water fish- 
ermen, is sought mainly at this point, or, to be more 
accurate, from Punta Goi'da to Punta Ilassa, and some 
distance up the Caloosahatchee Iliver, but it is generally 
held that the great fish is found all over the Gulf, even 
on the Louisiana and Texas coasts. 

The commercial situation in Florida is not so agree- 

200 



able a subject as its holiday side. To put the case 
bluntly, as it was put to rae by one of the shrewdest 
and most famous of the self-made millionaires of our 
country, who has an intimate knowledge of his snljjeet, 
" Florida has been a great sink for Nortliern and AVest- 
ern capital, and not a dollar of profit on any single line 
of investments has ever been taken out of the State." 
The State has a completely serviceable system of rail- 
roads, but their opportunities for money -making have 
been mainly limited to thi-ee winter months in the year. 
The hotels, taken as a whole, have not paid, for the same 
reason, and one of the shrewdest men in that business 
complained to me that the invasion of rich men and 
land companies into the business, with their magnificent 
buildings and indiflference to profit or loss, will not 
better the outlook in that avenue for investment. Or- 
ange culture has returned the interest on the snm in- 
vested only in one year out of every four, and cocoanut 
cultui'e and the other industries, with the exception of 
sugar-making, have not yet proved profitable. 

The state of the orange trade, which is associated 
with Florida first in every American mind, is peculiar. 
The trade in that fruit is at a disadvantage in one re- 
spect, especially when the crop is heavy and fine. It is 
so because the oranges can only be distributed by ven- 
tilated cars amono- the laro:e towns and railroad centres, 
and are not — at ])resent, certainly — in use as a general 
and po})ular article of food, but rather as ornaments on 
the tables of the well-to-do. But the main trouble is 
apart from tliis. It is that when what is known as " the 
boom" in Florida was in progress, in 1873 to 1876, the 
bulk of the land that was for sale was in the form of 
land grants to railways, land company tracts, and the 
sections taken upon homestead rights by persons who 
came to Florida simply to get land for nothing, and 

OAO 



who afterwards wanted less of it, and some cash for 
what they coukl sell. The land thus at hand to meet 
the " boom " was nearly all pine land. All Florida was 
interested in saying that this pine land was the best 
orange land in the world. It is a fact that oranges can 
be forced to grow on that land, though this is often 
done only at a great cost, and when the object is at- 
tained the fruit brings prices that, to say the least, 
leave no profit for the ]:)lanter. Thus it came about 
that ninet\^-nine one-hundredtlis of the groves in Florida 
were established where they would not produce returns 
on the first investment; in all probability the majority 
will not pay the second owners. They are not on or- 
ange land. On the other hand, a few shrewder invest- 
ors came to Florida, and went about the State studj'ing 
the characteristics and peculiarities of the business. 
They noted what sort of land and locations promised 
success, observing that the lands which produced the 
best fruit were confined to certain sorts, and that the 
best protection against frost was water to the north- 
ward or northwestward. Tliese deliberate and observ- 
ing men find no fault with their investments. They have 
not only produced what are I'ated as the best oranges 
in the world, but they have obtained extra and even 
fancy prices for their yields, and have made handsome 
profits. Halifax and Indian river fruit, for instance, 
usually grown on high shell hammock land or heavy 
marl hammock land, is quoted regularly at a dollar 
above the market. This account of the history of the 
trade, concurred in by the shrewdest planters I met, 
explains why Florida oranges difi'er as they do in qual- 
ity. The perfect Florida orange is thin-coated, heavy, 
full of sugar, and yet with sufficient sub-acid to give it 
sprightliness — like something richer than a rich lemon- 
ade. The groves that produce this fruit will remain. 

203 



and continue to make profits. Many of the other sort 
must be abandoned, and many of intermediate value must 
be sold for little mone}^ to new owners. 

Slirewd business men who know the State and its re- 
sources assert that tlie finding of the phosphate beds in 
the region west of the centre of the peninsula is one of 
the greatest of recent American di.scoveries. The phos- 
phate beds are heaviest on what may be called the 
divide or high ground from wliich the waters flow in 
contrary directions. As is almost always the case, the 
district contains countless lakes and much spongy soil. 
Here are found potash and vegetable ammonia, but 
their commercial fitness remains to be determined. 
The thick beds of rock phosphate are along either side 
of the Withlacoochee Kiver, in Hernando and Pasco 
counties, and to a lesser extent in other counties as far 
north as Gainesville. All the phos))liate land is from 
200 to -iOO feet higher than the sea-level, and it is ])opu- 
larly believed that it was an island wlien the major part 
of the peninsula was under water. Possibly it may 
have been a bird roost, like the guano islands of Peru. 
It is being mined in several places, and cargoes contain- 
ing eighty to eighty-five per cent, of phosphate have 
been shipped. A cargo of seventy -seven per cent, 
phosphate showed only one per cent, of iron. 

Tliere has been a boom in this product, and with the 
usual unhappy consequences. Men were induced to put 
money into something like 200 organized companies. 
As was the case in the oil region, and in the history of 
so many other speculative enterprises, the first holders 
are being sacrificed. Tiiat rock which contains eighty 
per cent, or more of phosj)iiate is marketable at a profit, 
l)ut the difficulty in most cases is that to get out a ton 
of this it is necessary to move five tons of phosphate of 
an inferior grade. When men learn how to separate 

204 



the impurity from the valuable product in the inferior 
grades, and when means of transportation and moderate 
freight rates are obtained, the value of the mines to the 
then holders will be very great. The supply appears to 
be inexhaustible, and it would seem that our entire 
South must use it, and that (if it is marketed at prices 
that will popularize it) it must cause the abandonment 
of other mines elsewhere, and find a market abroad. 
In Hillsborough, Polk, Manatee, and De Soto counties 
are deposits of pebble phosphates which are being 
heavily worked, particularly along the Peace River. 
This is being shipped in large quantities, 

205 



VI 



THE INDUSTRIAL REGION OF NORTHERN 
ALABAMA, TENNESSEE, AND GEORGIA 

One of the most remarkable curios in Uncle Sam's 
cabinet is Lookout Mountain, at Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
The traveller expects such, occasional combinations of 
mountain and plain on the edges of the Rockies, the 
Selkirks, and other great mountain chains, and yet it is 
doubtful whether any other as beautiful is to be found. 
For it has seldom happened that a tall mountain rises 
abruptly to interrupt and dominate a view so majestic 
and of such varied features. Glistening water, smiling 
farm-land, forest, city, hill, and island, all lie upon the 
gorgeous and gigantic canvas of the Master Painter, 
who there invites mankind to his studio to enjoy such 
views as we had fancied only the stu])id denizens of the 
air are privileged to dully scan. 

To surfeit one's self with the wondrous, chanwino;-, 
widening beauty of that splendid scene one does not 
have to consider the martial records that brave men 
wrote with their blood all over the foreground of the 
prospect. But when it happens that the spectator is 
an American whose soul has been stirred by the poor 
printed annals of Ghickamauga and Mission Ridge, the 
feast spread before Lookout JMountain ministers to the 
understanding the while it ravishes the eye. 

In nothing is this wonder-spot more wonderful than 
in its accessibility. It is even more convenient to the 

206 



tourist than Niagara Falls — almost the solitary great 
natural curiosity in our country for which one does not 
have to travel far and labor hard. In this case the 
grand view is one of the sights of Chattanooga, " the 
Little Pittsburg" of the South. The city enjoys it as a 
householder does his garden, by merely travelling to a 
back window, as it wei'e. for the historic mountain is 
at the end of a tive-cent trolley line. During half the 
year the tourist is even Ijetter served, for the railroads 
haul the "sleepers" up the mountain-side in summer, 
and discharge the passengers on the very edge that 
divides terra firma and eagle's vision. T took the trolley 
line during wdiat the Southern folk are pleased to call 
winter-time. The way led to just such a looking rail- 
Avay as one finds at Niagara Falls going down to the 
water's edge, though tlii-s one darts up the two-thou- 
sand-foot-high mountain-side, and is famed among pro- 
fessional engineers as a remarkable creation. It was 
planned and built by Colonel W. R. King, U.S.A. It 
is 4500 feet in length, with an elevation of 1400 feet, 
and a grade of nearly one foot in three at the steepest 
place. 

The terminus is the Lookout Point Hotel, which ap- 
pears to stand upon a bowlder suspended over the re- 
mainder of creation, as if a mountain rising out of a 
plain had thrust out a finger and men had put up a 
building on the finger-nail. The l)il>lical word-picture 
which tells of our Saviour being taken up on a high 
mountain and shown the kingdoms of the earth con- 
veys the idea tliat the view from this point suggests. 
One can but have an idea of it, and it can only be ex- 
pressed or described with a figure of speeclj. To be 
told that it commands 500 miles of the earth's surface, 
and that the most distant objects are parts of seven 
different States, is too much for the mind to master. 

207 



What the eye takes in is a checker-board made up of 
farms, roads, villages, woods, ridges, and mountain 
ranges, all in miniature. The Tennessee Kiver glad- 
dens the scene. Though it is 1400 feet wide, it looks 
like a ribbon, and, like a ribbon thrown carelessly from 
the mountain-top, it lies in many curves and convolu- 
tions, a dull green band everywiiere fringed with a thin 
line of trees that wall in the farmers' fields. You mav 
count ten of its curves, and three of them, immediately 
below the mountain, form tlie exact shape of an Indian 
moccasin, around tlie toe of wdiich a toy freight-train 
crawls lazily with a muffled gas})ing out of all proportion 
to its size. A brown and white mound of smoke and 
steam beyond the nearest farms is pointed out as Chat- 
tanooga, and a rolling wooded region on the right is 
spoken of as the bloodiest field of the rebellion — fearful 
Chickamauga. The low dark green mound in the im- 
mediate foreground is Mission Ridge, and between that 
and the curtain of smoke that hides the busy city a 
tiny bit of yellow road is seen to disappear at a micro- 
scopic white gate, which is the portal of a cemetery 
wherein thirteen full regiments of Northern heroes lie 
— the blue who have turned to gray in the long em- 
brace of death — five thousand of them not remembered 
by name. 

The rapid run by narrow-gauge road to Sunset Rock 
suggests a panorama in which the swiftly changing 
scene stands steady and the spectator whirls beside it. 
(Joloradan views are strongly called to mind, but the 
memory of them is at a disadvantage, since here all 
nature is green and fertile instead of dead and burned. 
Here the land is ])eopled, and there it is deserted. And 
yet the mountain-side is precisely the same as if we 
were back in the Rockies, piled up with great gray 
rocks in mounds and giant fret-work. Sunset Rock 

208 













'smms'^'^i'i*! '^*i' ' vk^-^::^ 





INN ON LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN 



itself is another linger or kiuickle of the mountain, 
clinging to its side, yet seeming to hang in mid-air over 
the ravishing landscape far below. There are several 
minor battle-fields within the view from it, but at the 
first vantage-point the splendors of nature crowd the 
memories of the wai' out of the chief place in the mind. 
The charm that has made this rock the favorite rendez- 
vous of the scores of thousands who journey to the 
mountain every year comes with tiie views at sunset 
when Phoebus's fires burn many-coloi-ed, Jind tint and 
tinge and illumine every distant object, from the lowly 
fields to the highest heavens, with slowly changing 
brilliant hues. I did not see it, and will not attempt a 
description of what I am assured is one of tlie most ex- 
travagant and splendid, almost daily, triumphs of nature. 
Let the reader imagine it, or go and be ravished by it. 
The stage -setting includes three ranges of hills, which 
o 209 



even as I saw them in the early afternoon were rosy, 
green, and darkest blue, and behind the farthest of 
these the tire -god shifts his colored slides and throws 
his gorgeous lights from earth to sk}^ 

Bridegrooms and beaux, and brides a.nd Jiancees — in 
a word, all lovers — make quite another use of Sunset 
Rock. There is a photographer there, and his exliibit 
of pictures shows him to be a modern Cupid, ever at- 
tendant upon Love. All around his show-room are 
photograi)hs of the smitten, a pair at a time invariably, 
taken in the very act of l)eing in love, seated side l\y 
side upon the gray insensate rock that juts above the 
diminished lands below. Eacli new couple that drifts 
along sees tlie jiortraits of all the others, and negotia- 
tions with the photographer follow close upon quick 
glances, hushed whispers, and coy giggUng. Then out 
go the lovers to the rock, and out comes Cupid witli his 
camera. He is a wag, this Cupid, for he says of his 
clients, "We git 'em in all stages of the disease." His 
collection easily divides the lovers into two classes^ — the 
self-conscious and the ecstatic. The self-conscious ones 
sit bolt-upright, a tritie apart, with glances fixed sternly 
upon nothing. Tlie ecstatic lovers cling together, and 
look with sheep's eyes at one another or at Cupid. 
Sometimes the classes mix, and one sees an ecstatic 
bride leaning all her weight of love and charms upon 
a self-conscious groom, who frowns and pulls away. 
There ai'e such pictures in the collection as would serve 
in a divorce court without a word of testimony on either 
side ; but, thank Heaven, the ecstatics supply photo- 
graphs that need only to be kept framed at home in or- 
der to banish discord as long as the wedded pair have 
sight to see how happy they had planned to be and 
were. Mingled discordantly with these trophies of the 
court of love are reminders of that class of idiots who 

210 



would manage to desecrate a junk-shop if tbey were ad- 
mitted to it. They have themselves pictured as flinging 
themselves ofl" the dizzy rock ; one has actually got his 
comrade to hold him by one too -servile trousers leg- 
while he dangles head downwards over the precipice. 
That is a touch of nature that does not make the whole 
world kin. 

There are too many other points of interest on the 
mountain for mention here — curious freaks of nature 
and charming spots in abundance. It is several days' 
work to see them, but there are plenty of hotels and 
villa settlements there for those who have the time to 
enjoy the place in its entireness. Lookout Inn, a hotel 
that will accommodate three hundred boarders, is on 
the tip-top of the mountain, and has the reputation of 
being one of the very best hotels in the South. It is 
owned and controlled by a land and improvement com- 
pany, and the princi})al stockholders are New-Engiand- 
ers. The railways carrv^ cars to its dooi's, and it is to be 
kept o])en all the year round. At the end of such a visit 
as I made the visitor simply tumbles back to the com- 
monplace earth on the inclined railwa3^ The car is 
built in the form of an inclined plane, like the gallery 
in a playhouse, with one side open towards the nether 
wall of rocks, and the other side glazed to command the 
marvellous view which seems to rise as the car descends, 
just as fairy views come up out of the stage in a trans- 
formation scene at the end of a Christmas pantomime. 
Then, suddenly, the car tumbles into a forest, and the 
onl}' view is of the preposterous alley down wdiich the 
vehicle is rolling like a ball sent back to the players in 
a bowling-alley. 

My task here is to tell of something that lies under 
and in that mountain view of parts of seven Southern 
States, of something the eye cannot see except as a hint 

211 



of it is thrown up in the clouds of smoke and steam that 
hano- over (yhattanooo-a. That somethino- is the indus- 

O c* '^ 

trial awakening of the South, or more |)articularly of 
that part of that sectioii where since the war the coal 
and iron buried in the rocks and soil now meet their 
resurrection in an activity that has connected Georgia 
with Pennsylvania. 

A very sage writer u|)on the industrial liistory of the 
South has shown that early in the century it promised 
to lead the other sections of the country, but slavery 
exerted the effect of humbling the artisan !)eneatli the 
planter and the professional man in the general estima- 
tion. A wonderful agricultural prosperity was devel- 
oped, and mechanical pursuits languished. Up to the 
time of the late war the South did not enthrone cotton. 
The South then grew its own meat and meal and flour. 
T>ut after the war, when the most frightful ]wverty o]i- 
pi'essed the region, the ])eople turned to the exclusive 
cultivation of cotton, because that was the only staple 
that could be mortgaged in advance of the crop to give 
the planters the means of living until it could be liar- 
vested. The poverty of the ])lanters, their dependence 
on the negro, and the shiftlessness of the negro, which 
led him to favor cotton as the easiest crop to handle on 
shares and to borrow money uj)on. were the causes of 
cotton's enthronement. Carpet - bag rule and the de- 
moralization of the ]ieculiar labor of the South ailded 
ten years to the period of Southern prostration, and it 
Avas not until 1S80 that the present great industrial 
development of that section began. It is therefore a 
growth of a dozen years — a wonderful growth for so 
short a time. 

Before the war there were a few small furnaces in 
this now busy district overlooked by Chattanooga's 
mountain, and formed of parts of Tennessee. Alabama, 

212 



and Georgia. These furnaces were mainly on tlie Ten- 
nessee Eiver and in eastern Tennessee, and the smelting 
was done with charcoal. The first coke furnace was 
established at Rock wood in 186S with Northern capital 
on Southern credit. The industry thus begun has con- 
tinued to be the enterprise of Southern men, for such 
are the majority of the persons engaged in the business 
—men of the wide-awake commercial class. The Chat- 
tanooga district, so called, is in the centre of a region of 
coking coals and iron ores, embracing a circle of 150 
miles in diameter, and covering parts of Tennessee, 
northern Alal)ama, and northern Georgia. It takes in 
one medium-sized furnace in northern Georgia and some 
smaller ones, wliich number nineteen, where there were 
none at all before the war. Its Alabama section — where 
there was no iron industry when the war closed, except 
at a few little furnaces built by the Confederates to cast 
their cannon — now boasts fifty-three large plants. In a 
word, the development has grown from the smelting of 
150,000 tons of charcoal and coke irons in 1S70 to the 
making of no less than 1,800,000 tons of pig-iron in 
18S0, '00, and '01. The steel industry is prospective. 
The name of the town of Bessemer is misleading. Basic 
steel has been made m the district from the ordinary 
foundry ore, and has been tested by the government, 
and declared to be admirable. A mine of Bessemer ore 
has been worked at Johnson City, North Carolina, but 
the cajiital for a steel-works to compete with those of 
the Xorth has not at this time been obtained. 

Eighty per cent, of the Tennessee iron is sold in the 
East, North, and Northwest — in Cleveland, Chicago, 
St. Louis, New York, and Philadeljihia. It competes 
with the best foundry iron for stove plates and all 
sorts of foundry-work. It ranks with the best Lehigh 
product, and is the favorite iron with the pipe, plough, 

314 



and stove makers of the East and North. Considerable 
foundry -work is done in the Chattanooga district. 
There are several stove- works there and some machine- 
shops that turn out both heavy and light castings. 
There are two large pipe-works (in Chattanooga and in 
Bridgeport), both owned by one corporation, and there 




THE TENNESSEK KH'ER AT CHATTANOOGA 



is also in the district a very large establishment for the 
manufacture of railway-brake shoes and other goods. 

The region in which the Cliattanooga district is situ- 
ated is a reach of bituminous coal and red hematite iron 
ore of limitless abundance that extends from Roanoke, 
Virginia, to Birmingham, Alabama. The coal crops out 
in AVest Virginia, crosses eastern Kentucky, Avhere it is 
worked as pure cannel, semi - anthracite, and bitumi- 
nous ; crosses Tennessee through the Tennessee Valley 
to northern Alabama. It is a belt containing 20,000 



square miles in three States, and everywhere the coal 
and iron accompany each other at pistol range. As an 
illustration, at Red Mountain, near Birmingham, the 
Tennessee Coal, li'on, and Eailway Company gets coal 
on one side of a valley and iron on the other side. This 
great company has several plants, and made more than 
400.000 tons of ])ig-iron in 1801. It has the largest coal 
])lant in the Chattanooga district — one that has put out 
Coo,oO(j tons of high-grade coking coal in a \'ear. Its 
leading men are Southerners, and its capital is from the 
Northern States and England. 

The labor in this great industrial section is mainly 
black, of course. The negroes dig all the iron ore and 
do all the rough ^vork at the furnaces. The coal is 
mainly dug by white men. The ver\^ great (]uantities 
of limestone that are (juarried for smelting-fiux and for 
building- work are taken out by negroes. It is found 
that with Avhat is called "thorough foremanizing'' the 
negro is satisfactory at these occupations, lie needs 
strict and even sharp "bossing"' to keep him at his 
work, ;ind it has been found that to invest one of his 
own race with the authorit}^ of an overseer is to pro- 
duce the strictest, even the savagest, kind of a boss. 

The whole coal and iron region suffered severely 
after the Baring failure m London. During three years 
the price of iron fell from i^l2, $14 50, and $15 a ton 
down to $8 50 and $7 75, by reason of excessive over- 
production. Only the few companies that relied upon 
convict labor were able to make both ends meet at those 
])rices, and it became painfully ap})arent that there is no 
decent ])rotit in iron-making at a lower price than |10 a 
ton. The Southern industry suffered more severely than 
it should have done because not enough of the iron prod- 
uct was utilized in home manufactures. The transition 
from an agricultural to an iron-making district had been 

310 



brought about tot> suddenly, and was allowed to go to 
an extreme point. The time was one of money-making 
in the iron industry, and the people were led to '"boom- 
ing" their new industry, so that nearly ever3^ one went 
into the manufacture of pig-iron, and too few into the 
convei'sion of it into manufactured goods. This will be 
full}^ understood when it is known that not a pound of 
hardware and not a pound of steel boiler plate is made 
in the South. Where there is room for manv laro-e 
stove factories there are yet but a few small ones. ])Ut, 
as has been shown, the manufactures are started. Such 
changes are brought about by one thing at a time, and 
already in addition to the works that have been men- 
tioned there are large works in Chattanooga and in At- 
lanta for the making of ])loughs and cane -mills, which 
contribute to a trade that alrendy reaches into South 
America, the East Indies, and Australia. 

The Tradesman, of (liattanooga, Tennessee, the lead- 
ing authority upon Southern industrial affairs, published 
for its chief article in its '• Annual" for 1898 a ])aper by 
I. D. Imboden, of Damascus, Virginia, which makes 
very bold and confident pro])hecies for the iron and 
steel industries of the South, and fortifies them with 
expert and official government re})orts. This is interest- 
ing and valuable, at least as showing Ikjw the leaders of 
opinion in the South feel upon the subject, lie says 
that from his knowledge he forms a conclusion as 
strong as if it were mathematical that " the period is 
near when, as a grou}), the States of Virginia, North 
(.arolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, and Kentucky 
will become the largest and most successful iron and 
steel producing district of like area in the world." lie 
adds that ''contemporaneously or ultimatelv all the 
related industries will spi'ing uj) and floui'ish at everv 
exceptionally favorable locality in those States, such as 



Richmond, Lynchburg, and Roanoke, Va. ; Chattanoo- 
ga, Nashville, Knoxville, and Memphis, Tenn. ; Atlanta, 
Ga. ;♦ Greensboro, Wilmington, and Charlotte, N. C. ; 
Birmingham, Anniston, and Decatur, Ala. ; Louisville 
and Covington, Ky. ; Wheeling, Charleston, and Hunt- 
ington, W. Va. ; and at many other points."' He pre- 
dicts an eventual overflow of material for iron and 
steel ship-building in the Atlantic and Gulf seaports, 
thus extending to the cotton, rice, and tobacco States 
an incidental participation in the inland mineral wealth, 
creatino; diversified industries and a laro-er home market 




^"C'iUa.*-*^ X 7 75U 



/Vd 



CUATTANOOUA, FKOM THE KIVEK 



for their crops. He answers "yes" to the important 
question whether the Southern mineral region can com- 
pete with the Northern mineral region in the supjily of 
coal and iron. The mineral belt that underlies 25,000 
square miles of the Virginias extends into and across 
North Carolina and Tennessee, carrying equally rich and 
exhaustless stores of iron ; '' and even beyond the south- 

218 



ern boundaries of these States, in Georgia and Alabama, 
there are supplies of these ores so great that exhaustion 
will not probably take place while the human race exists." 
Kentucky he includes as an ore-producing State of high 
rank. He asserts that in recent years the South has pro- 
duced a richer and better c<»ke than the famous Connells- 
ville product, which is equalled nowhere else in the North. 
The jN^ew Iliver, West Virginia, coke was six years ago 
proved to be better than the Connellsville article ; but 
farther southwest, in \'irginia and in the same coal- 
held, a still richer coal is found underlying Wise and 
Dickenson counties and extending far into Kentucky. 
" Taking the Xew River field in West Virginia, the 
Pocahontas and Big Stone Gap and intermediate basins 
in Viro'inia, and their unbroken extension into several 
counties in Kentucky (and in the Cahaba basin in Ala- 
bama), we have an aggregation of several thousand 
square miles of coking coals superior " (to that of Con- 
nellsville), " and so distributed as to make a compara- 
tively short haul from some one or other of these dis- 
tricts to one of our ore districts." This writei- believes 
that the average haul — an important consideration — 
will be shorter in the South than that by which the 
coal and iron of the Xorth have been brought togethei'. 
He says that six of the seven States he has named pos- 
sess an abundance of bituminous coal, such as is largely 
used for a lower but useful grade of coke. Southern 
coal is much more easily and cheaply mined than that 
in the North, and of the Southern iron ores the greater 
part is mined, not at the bottom of deep shafts, but 
frcnn the hill and mountain sides in the full light of tlie 
sun. He thinks that the continued presence of negro 
labor in such great force in the Southern States is " prov- 
idential." The negro's brawn and muscle, his cheap 
labor, and his ac(piaintance and characteristic content- 

219 



ment with his surroundings are considered as a large 
eh^ment in tlie early prospective growtli of Southern coal 
and iron industries. 

The last census Inilletin u})on the iron and steel in- 
dustry of the South shows that in the ten years he- 
tween 1880 and 1890 there has been a remarkable 
jrrowth of these businesses, and that thev have bet;:un to 
follow a course of concentration, with the result that 
the capital invested in blast-furnaces has increased from 
sixteen millions to thirty-three millions of dollars, while 
the monc}' put into rolling-mills and steel-works has 
grown from eleven millions to seventeen millions. The 
output has increased enormously, and the quality of the 
])r()duct has greatly improved. In the amount of cap- 
ital invested Alabama is now " far in the lead," Vir- 
ginia is second, and West Virginia is third ; but West 
Virginia is close to Alabama in the value of her ir(m 
pi'oducts, because a larger prcjportion of her iron and 
steel is worked into valuable grades of finished ])rod- 
ucts. In ISSO the South produced nine per cent, of 
the pig-iron yield of the whole country, but in 1800 she 
produced nineteen per cent. Alabama shows the great- 
est increase in the blast-furnace industry during the 
decade, and Jefferson County — that in which Birming- 
ham is situated — is now the most important iron-mak- 
in": district in the South. In 1880 there were but two 
establishmeuis there, with a capital of one million ; 
now thei'e are ten such establishments, with a capital of 
almost nine millions of dollars. Steel-making has made 
but little progress, the government report says, because 
the Southern ores are generally unsuitable for use in 
the established processes of steel-manufacture. It is in- 
sisted, however, that good steel has been made in the 
South, though whether it can be made in competition 
with the Xorth is certainly an open question yet. 

220 



Tennessee has more resources that can be utilized 
in manufactures than any other one of the Southern 
States, and already she leads in the possession of the 
greater number of manufacturing- towns. She is the 
largest grain - producer 
among the Southern 
States, and the output of 
her Hour and grist mills 
is so great as to amount 
to one-lifth of the total of 
her manufactured prod- 
ucts. Cotton and wool- 
len manufacturing grows 
there so rapidly that one 
mill now turns out more 
tlum the whole State 
produced ten years ago. 
Three millions of dollars 
ai'e invested in twenty 
cotton-mills, and the wool- 
len industry is sufficient 
to produce $1,250,00(1 
worth of goods, or half 
as much as the manu- 
factured cotton j)roduct 
of the State. Of tobacco 

and cotton-seed oil production tliere is a great deal, and 
the iron industry near Chattanooga has an importance 
that is dwelt upon elsewhere. The State is famous for 
its manufacture of wagons, which brought in $2,395,000 
in 1892. Its cotton goods fetched a, little more. No 
less than $4,017,000 was brought b}^ its cotton-seed oil 
and other cotton -seed products. Its distilling and 
brewino-, its furniture-makino-, and its slaughtering and 
packing, each was worth s2,0(»(».ooo in 1892. Cue mill- 




I'oINT LOOKOUT, LOOKOUT 
MOUNTAIN 



ion or more represents the value in that year of the 
followino- industries : tin-ware, manufactured tobacco and 
cigars, woollen goods, brick and tile, marble, clothing, 
saddlery and harness -making, printing and publishing, 
and blacksmithing and wheelwriglit work. The value 
of other leading industries was as follows : lumber, 
$10,000,000 ; flour and grist-mill products, $17,000,000 ; 
foundry and machine-sho]) work, $6,000,000; iron and 
steel. $5,000,000; and leather, $3,000,000. 

Is this dull reading ( Stop a bit and consider whether 
such detailed accounts of the new industrial activity in the 
South do not show" that times have clianged since that 
section deserved to be ridiculed and pitied for a stupid 
and slavelike reliance upon one product of the soil. 
And yet in greater or less degree I show the same facts 
about nearl}" all the Southern States. There are parts 
of our West of which it can truly be said that nearly 
the entire reliance of the ])eople is upon silver ore or 
upon wheat ; but the old indictment against the South 
will not stand anywhere, except it be in purely agri- 
cultural Mississippi; and there, as I shall show, the 
fruit-grower and truck-farmer are treading on the ema- 
ciated toes of old King Cotton. 

Chattanooga (under its veil of steam and smoke, and 
backed against a towering hill suggestive of tlie wealth 
of which it is one capital) is a city in which a man of 
cosmopolitan training could live "without shock or sacri- 
fice. It and its close suburbs shelter nearly 50,000 
persons. It is the third city in Tennessee, though it is 
more truly to be considered in its relation to the indus- 
trial district around it. It is an imposing, clean, tidy, 
modern, wide-awake town. The mixture that forms 
its population has prevented the formation of Southern 
types in architecture, dress, or any other detail, and left 
it ^vhat an artist would call commonplace, though it is 

222 







SMELTING-WOKKS, CHATTANOOGA 



in reality such a city as would be creditable to Cali- 
fornia, Minnesota, Ohio, or Pennsylvania. It is not- 
able among all the smaller cities of the country for its 
well-paved and orderly streets. Its principal thorough- 
fare is floored with asphalt, but so many other streets 
are paved with fire-brick, made near by, that it may be 
said to be almost completely a brick city — brick below 
as well as above. All its improvements, like its indus- 
tries and most of its people, have come since the war, 
and it is most peculiar in possessing a people so largely 
from the North and West that natives are very scarce 
indeed. It typifies the industrial region around it bv 
its varied industries. Its manufactures embrace ploughs, 
wood-working factories, lead and slate pencil making, 
boiler-works, electrical apparatus manufacture, stove- 
building, large iron-])i))e works, and a great malleable 



iron works that turns out car -couplings and railway- 
brake shoes. It has several Hour- mills, a brewery, a 
clothing -manufactory, an engine and machine works, 
several foundries, an extensive cotton compress, a tobac- 
co-warehouse, and the beginning of a cigar and tobacco 
manufacturing industry that must grow in unison with 
the new practice of tobacco-raising bv the farmers of 
the neighboring country. 

Chattanooga is a vei'v pretty city, climl^ing two or 
three hills and abounding in view points that take in 
veiy beautiful land and water scenery, and cit}' vistas 
that are parklike. Of course it has electric cars, and 
floods of electric light at night — for these new South- 
ern towns are built Iw tiie same spirits that dominate 
the new West. It is typically American also in the 
fact that every family in it inhabits a separate house 
with a garden attached. It is distinguished, like Brook- 
lyn, by its cliurches. All the considerable denomina- 
tions have meeting-houses there, and even the Sweden- 
borgians and Christian Scientists are in the list. Some 
of these edifices are very handsome. The Opera-house 
and the home of the Mountain City Club are deserving 
of equal praise, and all alike speak volumes for the 
taste and refinement of the dominant element of tlie 
populati(Mi. Its })eople. its progressive government, and 
its proud educational system are deserving of extended 
mention, but the limits of each snbject in a chapter that 
aims to cover so busy and wide a tei'ritory are too nar- 
row to make this possil)ie. 

Students of the progress of the State of Alabama 
show that it has made greater industrial advance in the 
twelve months of 1802-9o than in any precediiig twenty 
years of its history. This is true alike of her manu- 
factures, agriculture, commerce, and railroads. In the 
utilization of her mineral resources she has accomplished, 

224: 



relatively, greater progress than any State in the Union. 

Her iron productions constitute a third of her output, 

and have led to the establishment of her rolling-mills, 

machine-shops, pipe-foundries, and the 

i(>st, tiiough it is stdl true that the 

*^tif%^^ State sends out l.ir too much 

ot her iron toi m.mufacture 



'^knt'. 



olseAv here into goods 
u hose home man- 



^^'\ 








ENTUANCE TO A COAL MINE 



ufacture would, and will yet, greatly swell her rev- 
enues. But, apart from her mineral resources, she has 
trebled her cotton -mill output, multiplied her cotton- 
seed produce by eight, and gone largely into the manu- 
facture of lumber and wooden articles, agricultural im- 



])lements, boots and shoes, wagons, furniture, flour and 
meal, and naval stores. The State stands fourth in the 
South in the manufacture of cotton goods. In two 
years previous to January 1, 1893, she added nearly 
2000 looms and more than 100,000 spindles to her mill- 
ing facilities. In 1880 she had invested $3,300,000 in 
her iron industries, but in ]89(» this sum had been 
swelled to $19,000,000. In 1892 she furnished moi'e 
than 5,000,000 tons of coal, or more than one -fifth of 
the entire Southern coal product, and led all her sister 
States except AYest Virginia. She is the fifth coal- 
producing State in the Union. Of coke her produc- 
tion in 1891 was about 1,300,000 short tons. 

The census shows that the increase of population in 
the last decade was a little less than 20 per cent., but 
the assessed valuation of real estate in Alabama in- 
creased (30.1:0 per cent., and the enrolment of children 
in the public schools increased 01.53 per cent. North- 
ern Alabama has felt the first tide of immigration to 
the South more strongly than any other section of equal 
extent. Birmingham is said to have been a farm at the 
close of the rebellion, and busy Anniston was a group 
of timbered hills very much later than that. There is a 
truly Western flavor to the history of a land company 
in one of these cities. It divided more than $5,500,000 
with its stockholders in a little more than five years, 
npon an investment of $100,000. 

The new city of Birmingham in 1880 had 00 estab- 
lishments and 27 industries, and in 1890 its establish- 
ments numbered -±17 and its industries 48, while the cap- 
ital invested had swelled from two millions to seven 
millions of dollars. Its leading workshops are carriage 
and wagon factories, foundries, and machine-shops, thi'ee 
iron and steel working plants, plauing-mills, and print- 
ing and publishing works. In what is known as the 

226 



Birmingham district there are 25 iron-furnaces, with a 
capacity for 2600 tons of pig-iron dail_v. All are within 
twenty miles of the town, (^^nsolidations of large com- 
])anies have recently strengthened this remarkable iron 
centre, adding to the economy with which its products 
are obtained, and fitting it to meet a dull market better 
than before. Experts have declared that several of the 
works at tliis place stand as models in judicious con- 
struction and economical results to the whole country 
and to Europe also. Some are so favorably located 
near ore and coal that it has been proved that nowhere 
in this country, and scarcely anywhere in Europe, can 
iron be made as cheaply as they can make it. These 
facts are of interest as showing the permanency and value 
of the industry which has revolutionized northern Ala- 
bama. It has not only come to stay, but it has come to 
orow. Durino- the summer of 1892 the furnace men 
there were put to a severe test. They had to make 
iron at a minimum or shut up their works. They did 
make it, and onlv the smaller furnaces shut down for a 
time; the larger ones ran on steadily, and without 
losing money. Their owners assert that this experience 
proved that Alabama can make iron cheaper than it can 
be made in Pennsylvania. 

Wherever coal, limestone, and iron are found close 
too'ether the situation is favorable for the economical 
production of pig-iron ; and as that condition distin- 
guishes a large part of northern Alabama, the extension 
of the industrial activity of the Birmingham district is 
confidently looked for. On this account the capital of 
some shrewd Northern men has been invested in a 
promising new town — midway between Birmingham 
and Chattanooga — called Wyeth City. It is on the 
Tennessee Biver, which is 600 yards in width at that 
point, and oifers uninterrupted navigation to the Ohio 

238 



and Mississippi and their tributaries. The railroad from 
Brunswiclv, Georgia, makes Wyeth City the nearest to 
the Atlantic coast of any point upon the tremendous 
inland water system of the Mississippi and its connec- 
ti()t)s. The railway facilities at Wyeth City are also 
excellent. The Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad, one 
of the best-equipped and most progressive roads in the 
South, has built into the new city, and work is being- 
pushed upon two local railroads — all of which place the 
new city on the direct route from Brunswick, on the 
Atlantic coast, to Nashville, St. Louis, and the North- 
west, and from New Orleans and Mobile to Cincinnati 
and the North and East. The Louisville and Nashville 
S3^stem is soon to meet the Nashville and Chattanooga 
at this point, 

I never want to miss a chance to combat the idea 
that the waste lands of the South are sterile, and the 
worked lands are played out. Tliis theory has taken a 
dee]) hold upon a large part of the pojndar mind, and is 
kept alive Ijy able men who command intluential ave- 
nues to the public ear, though why they do so I do not 
understand. I have found that the most prosperous 
farmers in the South, and perha])s in the United States, 
are operating on the tide-water lands of North Carolina, 
and that trucking and fruit-growing in the sandy soil of 
the Piny Woods land of Louisiana and JNIississippi are 
accompanied by the very brightest prospects. I have 
no other master to serve than the truth, and the plain 
truth is that the reason I cannot declare the major part 
of that country gladdened by prosperous farming is that 
the South has not tried to attract poor immigrants, that 
her enemies and critics have kept them from going there 
unbidden, that the swarms of semi-idle and parasitic 
neoToes stand in the way of better brawn and muscle, 
and that the total new or foreign-born part of the popu- 

280 



lation of nineteen million souls in those States is less 
than three per cent. — is almost nil in some of the States. 
And yet there are examples of what can be done 
there— strawlike in dimensions though they be. Let 
me condense the facts given by Mr. Thurston H. Allen 
in a recent issue of the Manufacturers' Record respect- 




COURT-HOUSE, CHATTANOOGA 



ino; an instance in Alabama. In 1878, he says, the Rev. 
Father Iluser, a German Catholic priest, bought a tract 
of two thousand acres of worn-out land known as the 
"Wilson Plantation, in St. Florian, Lauderdale County, 
Alabama. It had grown cotton exclusively till at hist 
it was abandoned to broom-sedge and briars, and pro- 
nounced worthless. The priest got it for four dollars an 
acre. 

"Dr. Iluser built a cliurch ;uh1 a school-house, and in 1878 divided 
the plantation into tracts of from ten to fifty acres each, and placed 

2:)1 



thereon some foity-live families, all German Catliolics, from Pennsyl- 
vania, Ohio, Illinois, New York, and other States, to whom he sold 
tliese lands at from $8 to $15 per acre, according to location and im- 
provements. These colonists had experienced the rigors of the North- 
ern and Western climates with the certainty of cold and drought. 

"They were all poor; their industry elsewhere had not hitherto 
availed them to any great extent. It had taken all the fruits of their 
labor to sustain them up to this time, so that most, if not all of them, 
were forced to go in debt for their land. Some of those who are now 
the most prosperous and independent commenced with mortgages 
upon their lands, and with but (jne mule or steer with which to break 
and cultivate the soil." 

To add to their troubles, there was a defalcation which 
compelled them to pay twice for part of their holdings. 
They nursed the dead land back to life, and built houses, 




FIHST BAPTIST CHURCH. CH.\TTANOOGA 



fences, and im})rovements ; but wood was cheap, the 
winters were mild, they could work all the year round, 

233 



A 




.^.,J!^ 



i'Ost-officp:, bikmingham 



and they needed to spend little for clotliino-. The long- 
summers brought them two crops instead of one. 

"Vineyards and orchards were planted, and it was not long befon; 
a general improvement began to be apparent not only in the lands, but 
in the condition of the colonists themselves. As they gradually be- 
came more independent they built better houses and larger barns, 
adopted improved machinery and raised better stock, until today I am 
informed that there is not a family among them that is in debt. Tiicy 
raise almost everything they need upon their own land, and always 
have something to sell. They pay cash for what they buy and ask 
credit of no man. Their liouses are comfortable, their barns and barn- 
yards in good order, their fences substantial, their horses, mules, and 
cattle fat and sleek; their lands bring tiiem every year abundant crops 
cf wheat at the rate of twenty bushels to the acre without the use of 
commercial fertilizers), corn, Irish potatoes, clover, millel, vegetables 
of all kinds, while their vineyards afford enormous yields of grapes. 
much of which is made into wine of a good quality, for wliich there 
is ready sale." 

In 1878 the played-out land brought four dollars an 

2m 



acre, and many a laugh and shrug of the neighborhood 
shoulders. To-day it is rated at lift}'' dollars an acre. 
One may say that there was as much in the patience 
and industry and thrift of tliose settlers as there was in 
the soil, and, indeed, those are wonder-breeding quali- 
ties ; but they will not enable a man to raise double 
crops in the summer even in the rich Red Eiver Valley 
of Minnesota. They won't enable a man to work out- 
of-doors most of the year, not even in Ohio. 

The palace-car in which I rode from Chattanooga to 
Atlanta represented something more than a mere vehi- 
cle to me, and so does every palace-car to every constant 
or frequent traveller. If there are forty-four States in 
the Union, the palace-car stands for a forty-fifth. True, 
it is all-pervasive and common to all, like the atmos- 
phere or the national flag, the Derby hat and the re- 
volver, but it is still a creation by itself, which, taken 
largely, constitutes a very great area of space and a dis- 
tinctive condition and routine of daily life separate and 
apart from tliat in the other States. It has its own dis- 
tinctive population, its own peculiar etiquette; its con- 
ventions, its three classes of citizens (conductor, porter, 
and passengers), even the food that its inhabitants live 
upon, all differ from those in the rest of the States of 
the republic. I have called the palace -car common- 
wealth all-pervasive, like an atmosphere, and yet it even 
has an atmosphere of its own — a hot African air that is 
seldom changed or freshened, and that is gotten ingen- 
iously either out of the sun or out of a stove, according 
to the season of the year in the outer world, by a unan- 
imous army of negroes, who insist, with a loyalty that 
pales enthusiasm, upon carrying the climate of the Congo 
wherever they may go. 

Persons of microsco])ic intellect would remind tlie 
writer that there are two sorts of palace-cars — the 

234 



Warner and the Pullman ; but since thev differ only in 
the buttons and cap plates of the servants, and in the 
presence of a fish-net stretched across tlie bunks that is 
found in one sort and not in the other, it is not worth 
while to make the mistake of dividing this new State of 
the Union into a Korth Palace and a South Palace, as 
was done with even less reason with the Territor}^ of 
Dakota when that was taken into the Union. Ko ; the 
Palace-car State is one commonwealth, indivisible and 
alike in all its parts. I will admit that it is viewed dif- 
ferently in different parts of the country. Even the con- 
stant traveller who has lived enongh of his life in it to be 
able to vote there, if the right of suffrage were extended 
to its ])eople, regards it with varying moods in differing 
localities. Between New York or Boston and Chicago 
he looks out of its windows at the splendid homes and 
hotels of New York, Ohio, and Illinois with regret that 
he is hurrying by them, and tliat, when the time comes, 
he must eat in the car, taking chicken a la Marcmjo or 
baked pork and l)eans this time, because he chose the 
mutton stew, the only other hot dish, for his last meal. 
But I know^ one resident of the Palace-car State who 
has deliberately left a mining town in Montana on 
Christmas to clamber joyously into a jialace-car solely 
in order to breathe its familiar Congo air, to wag be- 
tween the velvet cushions of his Lower Six and the 
similar cushions of the smoking compartment, to eat 
the chicken a la Mareiigo with an added pint of claret, 
solely because of a sentimental yearning for the same 
sort of a Christmas, ])oor fellow, that others were hav- 
ing: at home in the East. 

As the porter drew the customary ]nllows out of the 
walls of the car and scattered them about, and knelt 
and brushed the carpet around the passengers' feet, and 
as the conductor leaned over the settee that held the 

2:56 



usual solitary woman passenger and grinned and chatted 
with her, the sentimental journeyer thought how strange 
it was that in every part of the land the palace-car held 
to its population, selecting it everywhere from the vary- 
ing masses of the })eople. lie need not have thought 
about it ; he had only to look out of tiie windows and 
witness the ])rocess of selection at each station. The 
soft hats went into the other cars; the beavers and' 
Derby's came into thh ])alace-car. The hoods and shawls 
went elsewhere, but the French bonnets and seal-skins 
and modish gowns all swept into the palace-car. Not a 
pair of boots was there on any platform bat was sure to 
lead its owner to the ordinary coaches; and so it was 




MARIETTA StlilCKT, ATLANTA 



with the Indians, the negroes, the flat-faced Swedish 
laborers, and the poor toiling women with the tagging 
children. All went into the other coaches, and left the 
sentimental journeyer surrounded by a people that 

287 



never can be better described than when they are called 
the inhabitants of the Palace-car State ; the same in 
looks, manners, dress, and tastes, whether they board 
the palace-car in Montana or New Jersey — the conven- 
tional folks — the men who smoke cigars and wear 
gloves, and the women who wear furs and read the 
magazines. 

They are perfectly at home, as persons of one region 
are apt to be when they are where 'they belong. They 
ffreet the conductor with " Well, it's as hot as usual 
here,'' and they say to the porter, " You need not bring 
the bill of fare ; I know it by heart." At night they 
catch the white eye of the Afric-American, and remark, 
" Feet towards the engine, you know." When they con- 
verse with one another they tell how tired the}'' used to 
become on the first day out, but that now they could 
ride a year without minding it. They add that at first 
they made it a rule to get out and walk at each divi- 
sional terminus where the engines were changed, but 
that they soon found that all depot sheds were disagree- 
able alike, and as for the exercise — ^well, a bottle of 
Apollinaris in the morning or a Seidlitz-powder answers 
instead. But the people of the forty-fifth State of the 
Union are not given to making one another's acquaint- 
ance. Their situation is not so novel and unfamiliar as 
to break the bonds of custom, like that of persons 
aboard an ocean liner. The one object of the inhabi- 
tants of the Palace-car State is to achieve a lethargic, 
semi-comatose condition, and loll the length of the rail- 
way, minding nobody's affairs, resenting all outside ef- 
forts to mind theirs, and capable of rousing to a normal 
activity and interest in life only when the train passes 
the debris of a collision-wreck, or rushes through a 
prairie fire, or a fire in an autumn forest. 

In many respects the Palace-cai' State is the best feat- 

388 



lire of Southern travel ; indeed, nothing else enables one 
to enjoy the beauties of that section and ignore its blem- 
ishes so well as does the palace-car. This is because the 
main blemishes of the South are its bad hotels. Until 
very lately the few " best hotels " in the South — such as 
the Charleston, the Ballard Exchange, the Royale, and 
the St. Charles — were all as old as the Astor House, 
and had the added and general defect of serving only 
fried food. There are new hotels just now at Savannah, 
Atlanta, St. Augustine, New Orleans, and one or two 
other ]>laces ; otherwise the South still stands in need 
of a general reform. 

In the Palace-car State of the Union there are per- 
haps twenty counties that possess little smoking-car 
libraries, containing the earlier works of Messrs. llow- 
ells, Stockton, Ilarte, Clemens, and Hale, but the great 
majority of rolling villages, towns, and counties offer 
but one book for the distraction of the mind and the 
elevation thereof. That is the Hotel Directory. Hav- 
ing nothing half so good to do, after the lamps were lit 
and the shades were drawn down, during this journey 
from Chattanooga to Atlanta, I took this directory on 
my lap and counted the hotels at which I had stopped — 
one time or many — in the other forty-four States of the 
Union. I found that the inn to which I was going in 
Atlanta would become the two hundred and eighty- 
fourth hostelry on my list. What a volume of reminis- 
cence that discovery suggested ! A genius, an inspired 
instrument of kindly fate, whispered that there was a 
new hotel in Atlanta. To it I went, and entered a blaze 
of electric light that shone upon resplendent plate-glass 
and o-ildino- and marble. Then to my room to find it 
better than I would have ordered it liad I the fairy gift 
of making my way by wishing. It was a symphony of 
white lace curtains, creamy Wilton carpet, carved-oak 

340 



furniture of the sort that proclaims Grand Rapids, Micli- 
igan, the mother of art and comfort, a great snow-white 
bed, and hovering about, with a touch of a feather-chister 




THE GRADY MONUMENT, ATLANTA 



here and a touch of it there, a ivhite chambermaid in a 
mob-cap — the only white chambermaid I ever saw in the 
South. There were well-chosen etchings on the warmly 
tinted walls. There was a reading-lamp at the head of 
the immaculate bed. The battery of toilet ware upon 
the pretty wash-stand was pretty enough to stop all the 
women in the streets had it been exposed in a shop-win- 
dow. It did not seem possible. It was like a trick of 
the mind — a dream taken standing. 

Then the dining-room ! If I had been obliged to de- 
scribe it while the full effect of its first burst of splendor 
was upon me, the reader would susjiect either my verac- 
ity or my brain, for remember I had lived upon corn 
pone and bacon and bacon and corn })one, with occa- 
sional interruptions of fried chicken, for nearly a month. 

il 241 



The ample, brilliant room, the swift, silent waiters, the 
white damask, the crystal, the plate, the broad hospita- 
ble chairs, the fashion-plate ladies with shining evening 
faces, each face between great shoulder-puffs of silks — 
these were the surprises that rushed u])on my vision. 
And then the bill of fare ! Blue Points led the elegant 
minuet, and consomme with marrow balls was the first 
fair partner. Then came smelts with tartare sauce, but 
without any final e on the name of the sauce, that hav- 
ing been lost in the long journey from France. Among 
the several sets that took their places in this gastro- 
nomic function were many such familiar cosmopolitans 
as young turkey and calf's head with brown sauce, and 
mushrooms and olives, banana ice-cream, six sorts of 
cheeses, every approved wine, nuts and raisins and 
candy with the pastry. Having eaten many times but 
never dined, I fear I misbehaved, and at the last I scat- 
tered silver like a Ilussian roue, giving a quarter to the 
waiter, another to the wine-boy, one to the head waiter, 
ten cents to the sable reminder of the court of Louis 
XV, who handed round the hats, and barely succeeded 
in holding back a dime from the portly man who asketl 
if I had dined well, and who lost the money by explain- 
ing that he was the manao^er of the hotel. In this age 
of introspective analysis and psychologic literature it is 
as well to put on recoi'd the sensations of an impression- 
able traveller upon encountering a good hotel. 

The old soldier wdio, in revisiting each spot where he 
served under fire, fights his battles over again before his 
younger friends, will be puzzled how to play his role in 
Atlanta. What was a village when General Sherman 
destroyed it now spreads over a city's area. For At- 
lanta is truly a fine, substantial, genuine, bustling city. 
It is the busy, throbbing heart of a revolutionized re- 
gion that includes the best parts of several States. It 

243 



does not grow upon — it bursts upon the visitor. He 
alights from the cars in a noisy, crowded, smoke-grimed 
depot, and sees that his is but one of many trains — to 
New Yorlcto New Orleans, to the West, and to smaller 
places nearer by. Leaving the depot, he finds himself 
in a solid, imposing, genuine city, built of brick, paved 
with stone, thick with towering buildings. It is West- 
ern, rather than Northern or Eastern, and the first im- 
pression is that it is Chicagoesque ; but it is so only in 
the older parts. The newer districts are much more 
suggestive of Denver — clean and tasteful and artistic. 
However, that is not borne in upon the visitor's faculties 
until he has entered the newest office l)uildings and the 
newest hotels and theatres, and seen how rich and yet 
how chaste and well controlled is the use of costly 
material and the distribution of ornament. The Ara- 
gon, the Equitable Building, the Opera-house, and more 
than one of the bank buildings might all have been 
built for Denver, the parlor or Pullman city of America. 
Atlanta is the commercial distributing centre for the 
southeastern part of our country. It is both okl and 
new. It was first settled in 1839, and presently was 
christened Terminus. Then it became Marthasville, antl 
in 1847 it took the name xVtlanta. It was destroyed 
in 1864 — an occurrence that no more hinders the 
growth of American cities than heavy showers disturb 
so many ducks. New York and Boston have been all 
but burned up, and Chicago and Atlanta quite so, yet 
such trifles soon turn to memories, and then to mere 
sentences in the local histories. I take it that the most 
interesting thing about Atlanta is tiiat — even to a 
greater extent than this has been true of Chicago dur- 
ing many years — it is a city wherein every man works 
for his living. The bustle in the wholesale and the 
retail business streets, and the eternal whiz-ziz-ziz of the 

243 



electric cars tluit run upon seventy-four miles of streets, 
typify and emphasize this feature that seems so peculiar 
to us of the older cities. Nine steam railway lines 
meet in the black, iron-mouthed railway depot, which is 
in the precise centre of a circular area of buildings and 
streets — a circle nearly four miles in diameter. Within 
tliis area is all that should complete a city, and more 
l)esides, for the imposing State Capitol is one of the in- 
stitutions it contains, and besides there is a notable col- 
lection of educational foundations, including several 
private medical colleges, a dental college, a law-school, 
several seminaries for girls, and two collegiate schools 
for boys, six institutions for the tuition of negroes, two 
libraries, and the State Technological School of Georgia. 
Of church buildings there are no less than ninety-eight. 
The piety of the masses of the Southern people is suifi- 
ciently remarkable to be worthy a chapter by itself, and 
it is thus reflected in this work-a day capital. Grant 




THE LAKK, GKANT PARK, ATLANTA 

244 



Park, the popular pleasure-ground, is, I suspect, the most 
ambitious city play-ground in the South, and will hold 
its rank if the people have their will with it. 

But it is as a commercial and manufacturing city that 
Atlanta must get the most praise and excite the greatest 
wonder. According to the most reliable figures I could 
obtain the city contains 225 wholesale mercantile houses, 
which transact an annual business of $95,000,000. The 
city also operates six hundred and forty-odd manufacto- 
ries that are capitalized at about $20,000,000. It is close 
to coal and iron, workable clays, and soft and hard wood 
forests, and these materials enter most largel}^ into the 
local manufactures. All these are growing, and the an- 
nual investments in new buildings I'each deep into the 
millions. 

Very like so many Western folks — that is to say, very 
American — are the business men of the city. Nowhere 
else in the South do the methods of the merchants and 
manufacturers carry so many reminders of what, when 
we see it elsewhere, we call the "hustling" spirit. As 
an illustration, I have at hand an appeal to the Atlanta 
City Council for an appropriation of $10,000 for the 
Manufacturers' Association, which claims to represent 
about $10,000,000 in factories and other property. Its 
members say they want to spend the appropriation and 
twice as much of their own raising to " put Atlanta- 
made goods in every retail store in Georgia, and induce 
our people to patronizes home industries and keep Georgia 
money in Georgia." They promised to keep at home 
millions of dollars a month that were then s])ent 
in ])urchasing elsewhere goods that are made and 
could be bought at home, and the}' add that thev 
"can duplicate any order in the world" (the A\^est- 
ern hustlers never stop short of "the world" in their 
similes) " for the same money. We can do it. we are 

24.T 







THE ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN AT GRANT PAKK, A'J'J.AIsTA 



doing it, and Ave want to teach that fact to tlie con- 
sumers." In one respect Atlanta will disappoint the idle 
traveller; it is not t^ypically Southern. The strongest 
proof it offers to the eye of being in the South is in the 
multitude of negroes in the streets, and, of course, in its 
mild winter climate. The climate reaches neither ex- 
treme of heat or cold, and although the city is upon a 
considerable elevation above the sea, it has had winters 
without snow, though a little which melts almost as it 
falls is expected there each yeav. Its negroes are fewer 
than one would expect to find, and though there ai'e 
other such cities, it is the only place where my attention 
has been -called to the fact that white and black men 
work together — not merely in mixed gangs of unskilled 
men sweeping the streets and digging the cellars, but 

246 



just such parti-coloved bands of skilled workmen also, 
for Atlanta has both black and white masons, bricklay- 
ers, carpenters, and artisans of other sorts. 

In the3^ears between 18S0 and 1890 the manufactui'es 
of Georgia Avere exactly doubled in value. The articles 
which return millions of revenue each are brick and tile, 
carpentering, road vehicles, cars, cotton goods, fertilizers, 
flour and meal, foundi'v and macliine-shop work, iron 
and steel, liquors, lumber, cotton-seed products, rice-clean- 
ing, tar, turpentine, and naval stores. Agricultural im- 
plements, leather, and printing and ]iublishing, each 
brings nearl v a million a yeai'. 

Improved methods of farming have greatly raised the 
yield of cotton, and the general agricultural prosperity 
is indicated by the fact tliat fort3'-two per cent, of the 
farmers own their farms, all Ijut four per cent, of this 
number having them free and cleai* of encumbrance. 
The liftv-eigbt per cent, of non owners are, of course, 
the negroes, who rent or farm on shares. There are less 
than 1,000,000 whites in Georgia and 858,000 negroes, 
but neither there nor anywhere else in the South are the 
negroes multiplying as rapidly as the wddtes. It was in 
Georgia that the movement to bring the cotton and the 
mill side by side had its first trial before the war. After 
the war the mills multiplied and grew, and considerable 
mill towns were developed. The State has been pushed 
down in the scale in this respect, rather in the number 
of its mills, however, than in the quality of its manufact- 
ures, which is still very high. Its iron industry is in 
what is part of the Chattanooga-Alabama district, but it 
has profited exceptionally from this minor resource by 
utilizing the iron in home manufactures to a "-reater 
extent than at least one of the neighboring States has 
done. 

247 



VII 
CHARLESTON AND THE CAROLINAS 

After one good look around Charleston, South Caro- 
lina, the thing which most amazed me was that no one 
had ever happened to prepare me for linding a city so 
unlike our others that it actually may be said to be 
'' built sidewise," as if all its houses were at odds with 
the streets. Strange also it seemed that no one had 
warned me that I should find it a water -color city of 
reds and pinks and soft yellows and white set against 
abundant greenery, and with horse-cars of still stronger 
colors flaming through the streets in the sunshine. Its 
own lovers, down there, like to speak of it as ''old and 
mellow," but that expresses only a little bit of what 
it is. 

First, it is very beautiful ; next, it is dignified and 
proud ; third, it is the cleanest city (or was when I was 
there) that I have yet seen in America; and, last of all, 
it is a creation by itself — a city unlike any other that I 
know of. It is built on a spit of land with water on 
three sides, like New York, and this gives its people that 
constant and enduring delight which continual views of 
moving water never fail to provide. Part of its ear- 
ly history is that of a planters' summer resort, and 
something of that forgotten holiday air still clings to it. 
If it suggests any city that I have ever seen, it is New 
Orleans — perhaps because of an indelinable Latin trace 
that is seen in the stuccoed houses and walled gardens. 

248 



and again, because of the important part the gardens 
play there, and the profusion of flowers that results from 
them. 

The most peculiar feature of Charleston is the ar- 
rangement of its houses, which, as a rule, are built 
with the side of each dwelling towards the pavement. 
This has been done to provide for either a southern or 
western prospect from the galleries, or " piazzas," as 
the\" call them, witli which each house is prettily and 
invitingly adorned. Because of this method of build- 
ino-, the entrances, which, without knowino- better, we 
would take to be the front doors, in reality admit the 
members of each household either to the end of the low- 
er porch or into the garden. The true front doors open 
on the inner gardens or courts. Full enjoyment of the 
gardens is thus combined with privacy; and though 
one may get only glimpses of these little preserves 
from the streets, strong hints of tlieir prettinesses are 
often carried up to the lofty balconies in the forms of 
vines and potted plants, like extensions of the gar- 
dens, the which whoever runs may enjoy. How very 
pretty and how very peculiar Charleston has thus be- 
come only a visit can disclose. Wherever one sees a 
line garden, the ]ialmetto, which gave the State its pop- 
ular nickname, is chief among its treasures; but the 
trees have all been transplanted, for they do not natu- 
rally grow there, but on the islands and low shores of 
the coast. In the public grounds about the Capitol at 
Columbia, in the interior of the State, there is a majestic 
]mlmetto, but it is made of iron, the triumph of an in- 
genious metal-worker. 

I quite boldly referred to the French appearance of 
the city during my visit, and thougli tliere were those 
who upheld me in my opinion, one very prominent 
gentleman, himself of Huguenot descent, insisted that I 

249 



was mistaken. He thought it more than hkely— ahnost 
positive— that the courtly manners and formal pohteness 
that distinguished the leaders of Charleston's best so- 
ciety in the city's palmiest days, and that have by no 




THE IRON PALMETTO-TREE AT COLUMBIA 



means yet departed, were a direct inheritance from the 
French. But for the rest he insisted that, such Vas 
the streno-th of the EnHish domination, Charleston was 

250 



always and is to-day pure English at all important 
points. In 1793 nearly five hundred French refugees 
from San Domingo made Charleston their refuge, and 
one thoughtful citizen argued, without insistence, that 
possibly that mere essence which made the place seem 
French to me was due to the San Domingans. How- 
ever, the discussion was and will be futile, and for my- 
self I can only say that much in the style of many of 
the houses suggests the same adaptation fi'om the French 
that we see in and around New Orleans, and in the dec- 
orations and ornaments that continually confront a vis- 
itor the French style is pure and indubitable. 

Mr. Yates Snowden has gathered in a published paper 
some notes of the various immiofrations of the French to 
Charleston, and if they were not influential in the life 
and accessories of the people, it will at least be admitted 
that they were numerous and important. He shows that 
after the various large immigrations of the Huguenots 
there came to South Carolina fully twelve hundred 
Acadian refugees in 1755-57, and thirty-six years later 
the five hundred French came from San Domingo and 
settled in Charleston. The contrast between the results 
of these immigrations and those which have caused 
New Orleans to be still a partially French city is so great 
as to make the points of comparison few and weak. 
The San Domingans made a very small impression upon 
Charleston. Whether they had been weakened by an in- 
dolent life in the tropics, they certainly were not a force- 
ful people. The}^ clung to their French customs and 
language, it is said, and yet they were swallowed up 
to such an extent that traces of them were few even 
fifty years ago. The Huguenots, on the other hand, 
coming as humble folk, disowning France and warmly 
adopting our country as their own. made a very groat 
impression even upon the aristocracy and the history 



of the State. To return to Mr. Snowden's paper, 
he mentions the fact that one of the active philan- 
thropic societies of Charleston is of French origin, 
" The Soutli Carolina Society," he says, " founded in 
1736 as the French Club, afterwards known as the 
Two Bit Club, and called the Carolina Society when 
the Huguenots more thoroughly identified themselves 
with their new home, is probably, with one exception, 
the oldest organization in active operation in the South." 

But from whatever its peculiar foreignness may be 
derived, Charleston is old and finished and complete — 
a small, inviting, ])retty — a dignified, almost splendid 
little city. 

While I was in Charleston preparations were making 
for the celebration of the coming of a^e of a notable 
fashionable dancing circle in New York. Twenty-one 
years is indeed a long time for a coterie of purely fash- 
ionable pleasure - seekers to hold together, and that 
age, perhaps, represents with some fairness the period 
during which the great fortunes made since the war 
have both aided jind incited our own wealthy peo- 
ple to display their good - fortune with more ostenta- 
tion and in circles more conspicuous by numbers than 
used to be either the rule or the possibility in earlier 
times. And yet at that very time 1 read the following 
notice in a fresh copy of the B'ew.s and Courlei', the 
great and dignified daily journal of Charleston : 

MEETINGS. 

St. Cecilia Society. — The One Hundred and Thirly-tirst Auui- 
versary Meeting will be lield at the Soutli Carolina Hall on Wednes- 
day, Nov. 23, at 8 p.m. "Wilmot D. Pohciier, 

Secretary and Treasurer. 

That notice concerned the members of what I suppose 
must be the oldest social fashionable organization in 

352 



America. If it is no longer wealthy, it will neverthe- 
less be conceded that no such circle is more exclusive 
than it is, or than it has been for a longer time than our 
o-overnment has existed. Its name indicates its original 
purpose. That name, which is said to have been adopted 
bv more musical societies than bear any other title, all 
over Christendom, was chosen in Charleston to distin- 
o-uish a musical coterie formed from among the lead- 
ing people. Xext, the St. Cecilias, as they are called, 
added dancing to music, and finally their sole purpose 
became that of giving three grand balls every winter. 
Two hundred men form the membership, but they issue 
about four hundred invitations to ladies, the number of 
persons who are thus entitled to attend the dance being 
between five hundred and six hundred. The invitation 
list is the elite directory of the town, so to speak. Once 
the name of a lady is entered upon it, that name is 
never taken off. unless the lady dies or mari'ies out of 
the membership. 

The eligibles are declared to be " any person in whose 
family there has been a member, as well as all men in 
Charleston who are credited with possessing the man- 
ners and instincts of gentlemen, without regard to birth 
or worldly condition."' A great many men of wealth in 
Charleston could not be admitted if they desired to, and 
for some who have made the attempt there have been 
heai't-burnings, as must always be the case where a 
society attempts to keep its memberslii]) wholly and 
thoroughly congenial. On the other hand, young men 
who boast neither wealth nor pedigree are admitted 
annually wlien their course of life and traits of character 
have won them the support of the others. As a rule, 
whoever has the entree of the houses of the members has 
little or nothing to fear if he applies for membei'ship ; 
then he needs oid\' the support of four-fifths of those 

254 



who attend the meeting at which his apphcation is con- 
sidered. The society is managed by a president, vice- 
president, secretary, and treasurer, and twelve managers, 
chosen annually. 

Intensely proud among themselves, the members es- 
chew display and notoriety so far as the society is con- 
cerned, and the rule that nothing concerning its annual 
dances shall be printed or given out for publication is 
believed never to have been broken. The only [)ublica- 
tions concerning the society that are ever made are the 
notices of its annual meetings and of the days on which 
the balls are given. Josiah Quincy, in his memoirs, 
mentions having attended a meeting of the society 
prior to the war of the Ilevolution, and speaks of the 
care then taken to make it private. Amid all the old 
things in Charleston (and it is a veritable museum, with 
its ancient churches, its pre-revolutionary post-office 
building, its library of colonial origin, and its old 
Chamber of Commerce) the fashionable society is it- 



i'' A 
















OLD IKON GATK, CIIAULESTON 



00 



self largely composed of men and women rather young- 
er than those of similar societies in other cities. The 
beautiful Battery — situated like that in New York — is 
so dependent upon nature that it is forever young and 
gay, and is the promenade for the St. Cecilias and the 
rest. It faces the beautiful harbor, with the sea and 
Fort Sumter (looking very small for anything with so 
big a history) in the distance across the broad blue bay. 
Facing the Battery, in turn, is a curving row of resi- 
dences, almost as fine and as beautiful as any in Amer- 
ica. The especial beauty of the show they make is due 
to the fact that they, also, keep up a process of reju- 
venation, by the addition of new houses of the latest 
fashion. The result is a number of noble old-time man- 
sions lording it over ample semi-tropical gardens, with 
their shady, breeze - inviting piazzas commanding the 
water and the promenade, side by side with dainty 
modern dwellings of what we would call suburban villa 
types, that give Charleston's old Battery a distinct air 
of youth and vigor. The men who enjoy tliese luxuries 
of the promenade and the fine houses of the showy parts 
of town are mainly those who maintain the Charleston 
Chib, in which so many Xew-Yorkers have been so well 
entertained, and the Carolina Yacht Chib, with its not- 
able fleet and its fine sailing courses, both in the harbor 
and at sea. 

■ Somewhat more popular in its scope is tlie Queen 
City Club, also a fine organization. Society, it is ex- 
plained, is in the hands of the young because their eldei's 
have not the means to entertain as the}^ would prefer to 
do; but however that may be, it seems to me an admi- 
rable society, in which mere money cuts as slight a fig- 
ure as it is possible to conceive. But it is wonderful — 
and doubtless sad from the former point of view — to 
note how the wealthy class has changed since the days 

256 



when the phinter was king. On the IJattery, once a 
row of planters' mansions, only one honse is that of a 
])lanter. >>'o\v the homes tiiere are those of retired fac- 
tors. })rosperons hiwyers, bankers, real-estate operatoi's, 
and men who have accumulated their means elsewhere 
and returned to the charming old city. 

The custom these people maintain of eating dinner at 
three or four o'clock in the afternoon will strike a stran- 
ger from the ]N"orth as peculiar. In some degree it ob- 
tains all througli the South — at least, after one leaves 
Xorth Carolina. Another thing — a trifle, but equally 
odd — is tlie habit the shopkeepers have of hanging cards 
in their doors to show the legend ''Shut'' or "Open.'' 
To a fevered New-Yorker it is lovely to think that per- 
haps this indicates that when trade is slow or the shop- 
keeper desires to attend a wedding, he can close his 
shop, and that the customers who come will exclaim, 
" Bother I It's shut. I must come again to-morrow," as 
they used to d(j under the same circumstances in New 
York not so very long ago. 

A very notable charity, distinguished further by l)eing 
the only one of its kind in the South, is the " Home for 
the Mothers. Widow^s. and Daughters of Confederate 
Soldiers." It was founded by women and is managed 
by women, solel}" for women and girls. The chief sph'it 
among the founders was jMrs. i\I. E. Snowden, who has 
seen the nol)le work flourish for a quarter of a century, 
who has mourned the loss of many who were associated 
with her at the outset, and yet who remains active and 
at the head of the foundation. The undertaking lias 
been completely successful. The women own the home 
building, and have a handsome bank account besides. 
They have given relief to as many as 2000 persons, 
and an education to hundreds who could not otherwise 
have obtained it. The home now shelters al)out thirty 

•J;iS 



women and something like tifty girls, who must have 
been under fourteen years of age when entered there. 
The school-girls spend ten months in each year in the 
building. Tliey are the offspring of the families of the 
upper grade, as a rule, though the only requirement is 
that they shall be white. The women are not all of the 
same social standing. 

The Home is in a historic building. Where now is the 
school-room the sessions of the United States court were 
held, and at one sensational session in 1800 one of the 
Federal judges threw off his robe, saying, " The time for 
action has come." Tossing his robe on the ffoor, he left 
the room, and thus summaril}^ ended the Federal juris- 
diction in South Carolina. However, it is a dove-cote 
now, and breathes an atmosphere of grace, mercy, and 
peace, whose genius is felt amid such surroundings that 
the glimpse I got of the garden, witli its cool piazzas, its 
banana-trees, and its liappy tenants, seemed altogether 
id3dlic. 

In nothing is Charleston more admirable and interest- 
ing than in its church buildings. Better yet, the people 
know this— which is not always the case in such matters 
— and are as proud of them as they should be. The two 
old English churches of St. Michael's and St. Philip's are 
to the city what superb statues are to a park. They are 
beautiful ornaments — monuments to a wealth of pride 
and taste which may exist there, Ijut will not be easily 
excelled in any modern memorials. But the Huguenot 
Church, the only one in America, is equally beautiful in 
its history. Its pastor, the Hev. Dr. Charles S. Veddei'. 
has written this concise statement of its claims ujion 
those who venerate the cause of religion, and especially 
that of these liberty-loving exiles of old. These are his 
words : 

•"Established by French Protestants, Refugees from 

25'J 



France on account of Religions j)er.secntion. Tlieir De- 
scendants, venerating that steadfastness to principle so 
conspicuous in their Ancestors, continue to \vorshi[) To- 
Day with the same liturgy (translated) i)ublishedat Neuf- 




charlp:stox cr-ui'. iiousf. 



chate] in 1737 and 177'2, in this, the < )xly Huguenot 
Church in America." 

In a paper which J)r. \'edder read before the Hugue- 
not Sijciety of America a few years ago he; declared that 
the first Protestant settlement on this continent was 
made in South Carolina by Huguenots. .Vdmiral de Co- 
ligny, seeking a place of refuge for the unha])py French 
Protestants, fitted out an unlucky expedition, which 
made an abortive etfoi't to form a settlement in Bra/.il. 
Then he despatched another expedition, under Jean Ri- 
baut, which formed a settlement at or near the site of 

360 



Port Royal. South Carolina, in laOi, which, as the Doc- 
tor says, was forty-five years earUer than the English 
colonization of Virginia, fifty-two years before the Dutch 
settlement of Xew York, and fifty-eight years before the 
foundation of tlie Plymouth colony. .Vnd yet moi'e than 
a hundred years were to pass betore the Huguenots be- 
came important factors in the making of South Carolina. 
Fire destroyed this first fort of the Protestants ; distress 
fell upon them ; and while Itibaut was away attempting 
to bring them re-enforcements, they built a ship, and 
after fearful hardships and losses of life a few survivors 
reached England. In 1()S<» the second Charles of Eng- 
land sent over fifty families to raise wine, oil, and silk, 
the English colony being then ten years old; and after 
the revocation of the edict of Xantes in 1<)S5 there was 
"a constant stream of Huguenot immigration to South 
Carolina.'" Four settlements were founded, and one 
historian, who saw the French there in 17(h), says that, 
being temperate and industrious, they " have outstripped 
our English who brought with tliem large fortunes." 
But the colonial government Avas English, and the Kugue- 
nots were made to suffer grejit discomfort on account 
of their religion, even the right to vote being denied to 
them. At last the three rural congregations merged 
their churches into the Established (Episcopal) (Mmrcli, 
translating the English liturgy into the French tongue 
for their own use. This was not done in Charleston, 
but after 1728 the services were hehl in English. The 
church itself was established tliere in ir»Sl-S2, and in the 
interval between that time and this the Marions, the 
Laurenses. the INLanigaults. and many, many others have 
distinguished the Huguenot race, and their own State 
as w<dl. 

The two Episcopal churches of St. Philij/s and St. 
^fichaers are, as L have intimated, the most beautiful 

2()1 



church edifices in the Cai'oliiias. They ennoble ahnost 
every view of (yharleston tiuit one gets. St. Philip's has 
the third building- in which tiie congregation has wor- 
shipped, Ijut it copies the second one, destroyed in 1835, 
of which Edmund Burke said that it was "executed in 
a very handsome taste, exceedinti' evervthins: of that 
kind which we have in America." The dramatic poem, 
still recited wherever English is spoken, which tells of 
the daring of a slave-ljoy who climbed a steeple to put 
out the fire that threatened its destruction, wherefore his 
master set him free, tells the true story of an incident 
m the history of St. Philip's. The })oem credits the in- 
cident to St. MichaePs. but that is a mistake. Poth 
these churches are of the general style of our old St. 
Paul's in New York, but both are very much handsomer. 
St. ]Michaers is said to be very like St. Martin's-in-the- 
Fields in London, so familiar to most Americans who 
have visited that city. Tlie stee})le is made up of a se- 
ries of graduated chambers, so well ])roportioned that 
each new study of them is a fresh delight. It is no 
wonder that the Charlestonians like to mention that it 
has always been a tradition that Sir Christopher "Wren 
was the designer of the building, though there is better 
reason to believe that it was (libbs, the architect of the 
London church which it so greatl}^ resembles. In the 
steeple hang the bells which are Charleston's most be- 
loved possession. Not only were they imported from 
England in 1TC4, but when the Pritish retired from the 
city at the close of the Kevolution they were seized as a 
military perquisite and sent to London. There a Mr. 
Ryhiner. who had l)een a merchant in Charleston, 
Ijouglit them and sent them back to Charleston. In 
J 801 they were sent to Columbia for safety, and when 
that city was burned by the Federal troops they were 
ruined by the Hames. In 180G they were sent back to 

262 



England to he recast l)y the descendants of the original 
founders, and in another twelve months they were back 
again, practically the same eight bells, but held by the 
government for the payment of $2200 duty. That was 
paid, and the money has since been refunded by espe- 
cial act of Congress. 

Two old institutions carry a strong suggestion of 
Yankee influence, or, at least, of Yankee kinship. One 
is the Charleston New England Society, a century old, 
which observes Foi'efathers' day with regularity ; an- 




THE CUSTOM-HOUSE, CHAKLESTON 



other is an influential old (Congregational church, now 
worship]iing in a fourth and very fine modern edifice; 
and — I had almost forgotten it — thei-e is actually a 
Unitai'ian church, which one day split olT from the 

20;; 



("'onu'i-et'-ational cliurcli (luite as it inio-]it have done in 
Boston. 

Nothing in Charleston seemed more pecnliar to me 
than the colon}' of buzzards which the citizens have de- 
veloped by taming and protection, and Avliich spends a 
])ai'l of each da\' around the market in the very heart 
of the city. There one may almost stumble over these 
huge black birds, which are elsewhere scarcely seen, ex- 
ce])t at great lieights. circling and sailing likc^ creatures 
of another woi'ld. I one day counted thirty-eight buz- 
zards on the cobble-stones of the street upon only one 
side of the market. They are quite as large as eagles, 
and as black and lustrous as crows, but have white legs, 
and bare wrinkled brown necks that make them look 
like caricatures of old-fashioned parsons in higli " chok- 
ers." They are extremely ungainly, stiff -legged, and 
awkward when they walk, and when they begin that 
flight which they are able to master so that they ajipear 
even more at ease in the air than are fishes in the sea, 
they start out with a su])remelv ridiculous u])ward 
movement, during which their long legs hang down 
straight, and their heads and tails flap almost together 
on either side of their feet. They then look as if they 
were being lifted by a string around each one's middle, 
and were struggling to get free. I do not think they 
are the common buzzards, without which no view in the 
Southern country is complete, but I could not find in 
book or ac(|uaintance any enlightenment on the subject 
further than the jocular statement that they are called 
'"the Charleston canaries.'' 

They are splendid scavengers. They roost on the low 
gutters around the market, and wait until tlie butchers 
begin business. Then, as customers come and the men 
of the cleaver and knife begin to cut off and discard the 
fag ends and worthless bits of the meat and toss them 

204 



into the street, the gTeat birds drop (h)\vn. one by one, 
and begin eating the waste. I said I almost stumbled 
over them; I certainly conld have walked upon and 
over them for all the heed they gave me. 

••Well." said I to a negro man who was priding him- 
self on having found the sunniest loafing-place in the 
neighborhood, ''these are mighty independent buzzards." 

" Yaas," said he, " dey is in'pendent, an' dey is ])roud. 















ST. MKIIAKl. S tliri!( II. ( IIAIU.ESTON 

•26.-. 



Dey's gittin' so tame, now, dey hangs round de city all 
de while. AVhen de l)utchers done leave, de buzzards 
done leave. Then de buzzards light out to de pen Avhei'e 
de meat am slaughtered. Oli, dey knows what's goin" 
on ; doan't need no one to tell 'em. 

" Dese yer buzzards nse ter slee}) 'crost de ril)l)er in de 
woods. Over dat away dey isn't king, like dey is here. 
Over dere de raid - haid raven is king, an' dese yer big- 
birds ain't nutfin like so in'pendent an' proud like you 
see 'em here, 'cause dey ain't king. De raid-haid raven 
is a bjo'o-er bird, an' he bosses de whole roos'. It' carrion 
lay daid a day or two days, dese yer iKizzards dassent 
tech it; no "deed dey dassent. Dey doan't meddle wid 
nuffin tell de raid-haid raven comes. Pretty soon, when 
he just gits ready, he comes 'long, more proud an' in- 
'pendent dan de king lion hisself, an' he picks out de eye 
ob de carrion. After dat dese yer birds is 'lowed to 
pitch in an' eat all dey want to. Dese yer buzzards 
doan't know dat carrion is sure enough daid till de raid- 
Iiaid raven comes an' teks de eye." 

Queer peo])le are the dai'kies, and a queer thing about 
them is that they believe there is always a. king over 
every bird and beast and creeping thing around them. 

It is a statutory otfence to molest these "Charleston 
canaries," and as the law is enforced, they revel there 
as if they owned the market. 

Long- ago Charleston otcw tired of " fio'htino' the war 
over again," and left it to the Xorthern politicians to 
<lo. Business and activity is what they talk of now, not 
as of things they possess in sufficiency, but as of essen- 
tials wdiicli they cry for. The city has been left in an 
eddy. Its local railways are but links of a great line 
which makes Charleston an incident and at times a side 
issue. The hope and prayer of the people is that their 
city may become the terminus of some great system — 

2m 



the Louisville and Nashville, perhaps. The relation of 
the city to the North, the West, and the Southwest, and 
to Europe, could easily become very important, for lier 
position would seem to guarantee it as an eventual cer- 
tainty. The deepening of the enti'ance to the harbor is 
a necessary preliminar}^, and this is being accomplished 
bv the Federal "-overnment. The harbor itself is suffi- 




IXTERIOIl OF ST. MICHAEL S 



ciently deep, but there were only sixteen feet over the 
bai'. This is being increased to a depth sufficient to ad- 
mit modern ocean vessels. 

In the old days the cotton of South (^arolina and 
northern (Georgia was all handled and shipped at 

:2G7 



(Charleston. A very ,i;'i-e;it number of persons shared 
the prolits. The fact(M's wlio bought and sliipped the 
cotton made their ])i-ofits; the men who mended the 
bales, those who presseil them, the stevedores — ail lived 
upon the business. Now the cotton is shipped directly 
from every ])oint where a thousand bales ai'e collected, 
aii<l it is even sent to Europe tVom mere railroad sta- 
tions which may not have imj)ortance from any other 
cause. If it had not been for the phosj)hate industry 
Charleston could not have su])]ioi'ted 25,000 souls. 

The phosphates are found to the northward of 
Charleston, mainly on the Ashley and Stono rivers, 
and in less extent and of inferior quality between the 
Ashley and Cooper rivers. The best phosphates, and 
those that are ''most workaljle," are along the west 
bank of the Ashley. Then, again, in Colleton County, 
between the Edisto and Ashepoo rivers, there are de- 
posits, but they are more expensive to handle because 
they are not as handy to navigaljle water as those 
which lie near the Ashley Iliver. These are all laml 
phosphates, and the title to them lies in the land. The 
river phosphates are in the Stono and the Edisto rivers, 
though the greatest and best dej)osits are in the waters 
around r>(niurort and Port lioyal, the best being in the 
('Oosaw Uiver, on the bottom beneath the water. The 
Ithosphates have to be washed and ground, and then 
ti'eated with sulphuric acid, which frees the phosphoric 
acid from the lime, and gives free phosphoric acid of the 
kind generally used in the manufacture of fertilizers. 
Charleston has fifteen factories, situated along both the 
rivers that flow ])ast the city, and making 200,000 tons 
a year. There are two factories near Beaufort, and 
there are others elsewhere in the State. That plios- 
]ihate which is treated in these factories is used for 
what may be called home consumption in both Caro- 



linas. Alabama, Georgia, and, to less extent, in Missis- 
sippi. A great deal of huul phosphate, washed, hut 
not ground, is shipped to Baltimore, Atlanta, Charlotte, 
Columbia, and many interior towns in the neighbor- 
ing States. The greater ])art of the water ph()S]>h;ites 




A r.VV OF CHAKLESTON FROM ST. MICHAEL S CHURCH 



has been shipped direct to Europe, though some has 
been used at home when the price has been lower 
than that of the laud rock. The State owns the water 
})hosphate, and charges the companies that work it 
one dollar a ton royalty. This tax netted $234,000 to 
the State in one recent year. Ihit Florida phosphates 

269 








Iff "Ti ' W 






ST. PHILIP S CHURCH 



of equal grade are being marketed quite as cheaply, 
and the South Carolina trade is menaced. The rem- 
edy must be a reduction of the State tax. That this 
relief will be granted, perhaps before this is published, 
I have very little doubt. 

Taking South (Carolina as a whole, we find it singular- 
ly attractive to immigration, and 3'et singularly avoided 
l)y it. It is one of the richest of our States in the possi- 

270 



bilities of its soil, which are very varied indeed. Yet it 
has only about one-third of its acreage under cultivation 
by a population more largely black than white, and so 
little infused with the foreign elements which have -lit- 
erally populated and enriclied great parts of our domain 
that its Governor truly says of it: "The people of 
^outh Carolina are homogeneous. Most of the whites 
liave common origin.*' But the majority of the people 




BUZZARDS NEAK THE MARKET 



are negroes, who, being under httlo stimulus towards 
social improvement, or any ambition except that of 
being able to live from day to day, deprive the State of 
that reservoir of latent strength and ])otential wealth 
Avhich an industrious and aml)itious multitude of the 
not-at-all-to-l)e-despised foreign immigrants would l)ring 
to it. 

AVe find stern competition in Florida threatening the 
revenue from the phosphates, and still more injurious 

271 



competition in Louisiana injuring the returns from the 
Carohna rice, and yet the ])rospect for the State is not 
gloomy. Tiie diversification of its farm industi'ies and 
the- remai'ivable growtli of the cotton-railHng business 
make it otlierwise. Within tiie hist six montlis (tliis was 
written at the opening of 1894) no less than three mill- 
ions of dollars have been expended in the building of 
\w\v mills in the Carolinas, and the people of those 
States and of Georgia are not unreasonable in insisting, 
as they do, that in time the mills generally must come 
to the cotton, and that the bulk of the manufacture of 
cotton must be done in the South. Governor Tillman 
did well in calling attention (in his paper prepared for 
the Convention of Southern Governors in liichmond 
in 18!)o) to the abundance and cheapness of the water- 
])ower in his State, lie wrote: " Mr. Swaim, the sjiecial 
agent of the census of 18S(), made a carefui estimate of, 
the water-power of our streams as reaching a million 
horse-power. If developed, these would give employ- 
ment to six millions of operatives in cotton-mills,'' and al- 
low for a corresponding increase of population. He says 
that " owing to want of capital in the State, these pow- 
ers can be bought cheaply now, and they would prove 
capital investments. The winters are so mild that there 
is comparatively no trouble from freezing. The benig- 
nit}'^ of the climate makes living cheaper, and this adds 
to the advantages offered to manufacturers by our water- 
powers."' 

The use of fertilizers has pushed the cultivation of cot- 
ton to the very feet of the mountains in the western 
part of the State, and though it has been overdone, as it 
has everywhere else in the South, there has been no need 
to caution the planters, for with the consequent decline of 
the price of their staple they have learned wisdom — bit- 
terly as it so often comes — and are beginning to diversity 



tlieir crops, at least suHiciently to provide tliemselves 
with meat and bread, as well as, in some parts of the 
State, to raise fruits and vegetables for market. In the 
mean time the starting of cotton mills has gone on, until 
from a possession of twelve mills in 1870 the State had 
forty-four in 1802, rein'esenting a capital of Sf^l2,000,0(H>, 
and employing thousands of operatives — nearly all 
white. 

Turning to North CaroHna, we tind this particular in- 
dustry much more extensive. The latest statistics I 
have been able to jtrocure — the truly excellent hand- 
book prepared for the Columbian Exposition by the 
North Carolina Board of Agriculture — include the facts 
and figures concerning one hundred and forty cotton- 
mills, and a statement that six other mills were then un- 
der construction. To these should be added thirteen 
woollen mills, one of which manufactures both cotton 
and wool. The strangest thing about this woollen indus- 
try is that though the State is admirably calculated to 
rank high as a wool-producing one, and though the in- 
dustry would be highly profitable, the fact remains that 
many of the principal mills buy their wool elsewhere, 
because the ravages of the dogs make sheep-raising prof- 
itless, and because the ])eople of the State will not en- 
force or permit the enforcement of the laws for the pro- 
tection of the sheep. 

But the manufacture of tobacco has brought more 
})rosperity to this truly enterprising State than any oth- 
er industry. It has not only awakenetl, enriched, and 
increased many towns, l)ut it has Ijuilt u]) several new 
ones, like Durham and Winston and others. The busi- 
ness is enormous. The State contains no less than one 
hundred and ten factories where plug tobacco is made, 
nine smoking-tobacco factories, and three cigarette-fac- 
tories. Several of these are world-famous and truly 

274 



enormous. The plug-tobacco-making town of Winston 
sold eleven millions of pounds of manufactured tobacco 
and paid more than $660,000 revenue tax in 1S91. Dur- 
ham paid $616,000. 

It has been said that the activity in cotton-manufact- 
uring has stimulated the many other manufacturing ac- 
tivities that we find keeping the Old North State astir. 
To my mind the fact is that the character of her people, 
her most admirable climate, and the opj)ortunities af- 
forded by her extraordinarily varied resources are at the 
bottom of it all, the cotton manufacture as well as the 
rest ; at all events we certainly find the activity reach- 
ing out in many new industries, notably the manufact- 
ure of buggies and wagons ; of furniture ; of paper, in 
several mills ; of cotton hosiery and other knitted goods, 
in ten places ; of canning, in twent3^-eight establishments, 
exclusive of several oyster-canneries ; of cotton-seed-oil 
manufacture, by nine mills ; of fertilizers, extensively^ 
in very many places. And, finally, among something 
like two dozen establishments for the making and 
working of iron, there has been newly founded a million- 
dollar steel and iron plant at Greensboro. 

The Capitol of North Carolina, at Raleigh, is a mate- 
rialized echo of the past, in and about which there is no 
note of the transformation of the State and its people. 
Built sixty years ago by a slave-holding people, it has 
remained unchano^ed throuo-h the" calamities of war and 
the brilliant evolution of the new spirit of enlightened 
industry. There it stands, classic, dignified, aged, but 
well preserved, as if it typified all that was good and 
enduring in the courtly, generous, but feudal masters 
whose rule has passed away forever in the Old North 
State. The beautifully proportioned old palace stands 
embowered among trees at least as old and majestic as 
itself in a rather modern-looking little park. The build- 

276 



ing is of granite quari-ied near by. The last glimpse and 
the first, like all the views one gets of its interior, sug- 
gest just such a strange blending of age and careful 
keeping as one notes in the ancient trinkets which now 








ENTRANCE TO ASSEMIU.Y rilAMlJER 



and then some wrinkled old sjiinster brings out to exhib- 
it as the choicest, tenderest relics of a distant genei'ation 
of her people. 

. The walls and floor are clean and fresh, for instance, 
but on the doorway to the Assembly Chamber is the 
strange leo'end, "Commons Hall." An nu'ed but dil- 
igent servitor who guides you wastes no time ovei" the 
great portrait of Washington on one wall, but dwells 

278 



feelingly upon the fact that in the cruel, tyrannical days 
of *•' carpet-bag rule '' the negroes, who were then the 
legislators, broke two of the precious old hard-wood 
chairs which wei'e the especial treasures in that chamljer. 
lie takes you across the hall— carrying with his spare, 
bent form a strong suggestion of a past as extensive as 
that of the capital itself — and there you are stirred by 
the sight of the prim l)ut noble mahogany provided for 
the statesmen of the luxurious past to rest and to write 
upon. The old man stirs you in quite another way by 
the remark that a Korthern firm has offered to exchange 
modern furniture for all that is in the old room. A 
bust of John C. Calhoun is the chief ornament in the 




A MniK TN TIIK CAI'ITOT; 



Senate Chamber, though the neatness and reverential 
(jrder that rule there strike you as better than any or- 
nament could be. 

Vou carry with you to the executive offices down- 
stairs a mind wholly given U]) to reflections upon the 
past, and, lo I the officials in those ancient rooms all but 

271) 
















«*«If<ii{ffl?JliilMff 



KAILWAY STATION AT KALEIGH 



stun you with the zeal and zest with which they press 
you to consider the present needs of the State, its bust- 
hng progress, and its \vealth of un worked resources. 
You'd hardly find a quicker spirit in Ohio or Rliode Isl- 
and. ]\Ioreover, tliere is little buncombe about it. If 
they tell you, as they will, that no State in all our Un- 
ion has such varied capabilities, or that its climate em- 
braces nearly the full extremes that are represented in 
our minds by Maine and Florida, they make their words 
good by showing you photographs of the snow-silvered 
spruce forests of the western mountains, and palm -lit- 
tered, all but tropical views taken along the sunny coast. 
They boast a little, as good Amei'icans always do, and 
if some of the things they say show a trifle of jealousy, 
or if some of the topics they clioose seem somewhat un- 
sentimental, 3'ou must remind yourself that the jealousy 
springs from a pride that has been wounded, and that 

280 



the best elements of wealth are not apt to be of a poetic 
nature. Thus they tell you that the excellent peanuts 
which North Carolina raises in abundance have failed to 
bring her the credit she deserves, and that the golden, 
beautiful tobacco which for generations has been known 
as ^' bright Virginia leaf," so much admired for use in 
pipes and cigarettes, was and is largely grown in Korth 
Carolina. The way in which the Yankee-like old State 
came to be robbed of the credit for its peanuts was this : 
For years the farmers of eastern North Carolina have 
been raising the nuts and shipping them in crude condi- 
tion to Norfolk. There they have been cleaned and 
bagged and sold as Virginia produce. This is yet the 
case, although the eastern North Carolina nuts are un- 
excelled by any others that are grown in the world. 
But the wedge of justice has been inserted in this case. 
The work of separating and cleaning the nuts has been 
begun in a small way by the North Carolina farmers, 
and the world at large will soon learn that though Vir- 
ginia and Tennessee grow good peanuts, they never pro- 






■fAf'' 



^Jik-l ^^^ \; 







GOVEKNOU'S MANSION, KALEIGH 

281 



(luce tiner ones than are iii'own in Xortli Carolina. As 
for the "goobers" that gave Georgia, its nickname of 
'' the Goober State,'' they are small and poor by com- 
parison. 

It is different with the splendid tobacco of the State. 
At last North Carolina is establishing a I'eputation for 
its own excellent "weed that cheers.'" Ikiyers now 
come to the Xorth Carolina mark(4-to\vns, and the best 
bright leaf is coming to be classetl under its true name. 
The town of Durham, so famous among men who smoke, 
is the capital of the golden-tobacco belt, which embraces 
ten oi' twelve counties in the middle of the State. The 
" mahogany,'" (»r ])lug-tobacco leaf, is grown in the west- 
ei'n part, and Winston, which maintains forty plug fac- 
tories, is its industi'ial ca])ital. 

Fi'om the Northern evergreen to the perennial South- 
ern i^alm is the measure of the State's fertility, and her 
])eople do not hesitate to say that all that should Ijridge 
the two extremes is also theirs. That they can and do 
grow whatever is grown elsewhere in the United States 
is true, with a few mai'lced exce])tions that distinguish 
the extreme South. It is the boast of the ]ieo}>le that at 
Chicago's great exposition no State displayed such a 
great variety of tlie {products of the soil. 

T'nder stich circumstances the most practical student 
of the commonwealth cannot be altogether ])rosaic in 
listing its ])roducts. If I have the good fortune to pos- 
sess the eye of that friend whom the novelist always 
addresses as " fair reader," let me also turn directly to 
her and ask what she thinks of whole farms given up to 
tuberoses! Such, it seems, are among the triumphs of 
North Carolinian husbandry. Some farms devote as 
many as twenty-five acres, " in a patch," to the cultiva- 
tion of tubei'oses. Dui'ing tb.e first year the tuberose 
bulb multiplies, and does not flower. It is during its 

282 




second year that it spreads its delicate, waxen, and aro- 
matic blossoms, and a great industry in this State is the 
development of the bulbs in the earth for the first year, 
and then the shipment of them to the North in barrels, 
to be sold b}^ the florists, and set out to blossom. North 
Carolina is chosen for this graceful branch of farming 
because of the properties of the soil, and because the 
bulbs can be kept out in it all winter. It is true that in 
fancy I see the pink and white nose of my fair reader 
lift a little at the disclosure that the suggested fields of 
aromatic flowers prove only to be furrows of raw earth 
hidinff bulbs, but onlv think how manv of the flowers 
are not sent away, but mingle their beauty and sweet- 
ness with the vast bouquet that blossoms all over such 
a reo-ion. And onlv think, when next you see a tube- 
rose in bloom, that it was in the Old North State tliat 
it started on its fragrant, and, alas ! too often pathetic, 
mission. 

284 



It will be equally interesting to all my readers — for I 
fear I have not been altogether successful with my spe- 
cial address to the fair ones alone — to know that in Ea- 
leigh thousands and tens of thousands of rose-cuttings 
are planted in the 
gardens and fields 
for the North- 
ern market. The 
Northern florists 
send the cuttings 
down to be planted 
and kept a 3^ear in 
order that they 
may grow roots, 
and that each may 
become a plant, a 
baby rose bush. 
Then they are 
shipped back in the 
spring to be sold as 
young plants. It is 
too expensive to do 
this under glass, as 
it would have to be 
done in the North, 
but it costs a mere 
trifle, by compari- 
son, to assist nature 
at the task down 
there in Ealeigh ; 
for in that clement 

city the people actually keep tulips, hyacinths, and such 
plants out in their door-yards all winter. Thus does 
North Carolina so cheapen the flowers with which we 
deck ourselves and our homes, and which we have so 

285 




STOCKADE AT THE STATE PRISON, 
KALEIGH 



lono- mistaken for X(jrtliei-nei's, like ourselves. Slieiiiav 
be said almost to hand them to us — in the profusion in 
which we have them, at least — as a charming sister 
brightens the chamber of a gallant knight. 

With the flowers go tlie fruits, as the}' naturally 
should. The growing of berries and of garden-truck is 
an industry tliat has develojied trul}' magnificent pro- 
])ortions in North Carolina. It is mainly conhned to the 
sea-coast section, but it is rapidly covering the whole of 
the front of the State. This ]xirticular ])hase of the in- 
dustrial revolution in the South, which we shall have to 
mention again and again as different sections are treat- 
ed, may not be as revolutionary as the appearance of the 
cotton-manufacturers in such great force in three of the 
States, but it is, nevertheless, very remarkable. Along 
the Atlantic edge of Virginia, the (Virolinas, Georgia, 
and Florida the planters in the <inte-h'Uu)u time grew 
little else than cotton, and depended wholly on the 
money it brought for the purchase of everything else, 
even to the goods that were made of the cotton. If 
vegetables and small fi-uits were seen to grow on this 
land in those days the fact nuide no im})ression, and the 
insignificant produce got only contempt. But cotton fell 
in value ; it proved itself a monarch in which too many 
persons had trusted blindly. There ensued an era of 
distress and gloom. It was in southeastern Virfjinia, 
close to the borders of North Carolina, that the warm 
climate, the humid atmosphere, and the rich soil were 
found to offer the essentials for maturing small fruits 
and vegetables in advance of those for which the North- 
ern people waited yearly with impatience. Here truck- 
farming grew from an experiment to a successful indus- 
try. Then came the travel to Florida as a winter resort, 
and then the almost wild scramble for land in that State 
for orange orchards — a scramble in which, as I have 

2s(; 



shown, the land that oi'ew no oranges and that which 
grew poor oranges went with the rest. The natural 
shortening of the journey between Florida and the Koi'th 
was rapidly Ijrought about by railroad combinations and 




PUKI'AUINd TLUICKOSI-: J5ULBS FOK THK IsOimiEUJl MARKET 



enterprise, and by the perfection and increase of steam- 
ship facilities. Thus easy access to the Northern mar- 
ket was afforded all the coastdine between Florida and 



o,si7 




A WILMINGTON KESIDENCE 



Norfolk, the first market-town of the new trade in garden- 
truck. As each State grasped the new opportunity the 
arrival of spring and summer produce was hastened in 
the North, and Georgia came to be first with her treas- 
ures, then South Carolina, next North Carolina, and then 
Virginia, last where she had been first, but still in de- 
mand to lengthen the link between summer and summer, 
and to shorten the period of winter deprivation in the 
North. As early as 1S84 Charleston alone was shipping 
half a million quarts of strawberries, a tenth as many 
barrels of potatoes, and 62,333 packages of vegetables in 
a season. 

To-day the Commissioner of Agriculture announces 
truck-farming to be " among the foremost occupations 
in North Carolina as a money resource." The best dis- 

288 



trict is around Xew-Beriie, where there are SOOO acres 
planted in strawberries, asparagus, green pease, cab- 
bages, beans, kale, beets, turnips, Irish potatoes, toma- 
toes, cucumbers, egg-plants, radishes, etc. During the 
shipping season the railroad has run from one to three 
trains a day from this district, and two steamers have 
made live trips a week laden with the produce. It is 
said, as a result of careful calculation, that this New- 
Berne section realized ^75(),00(> from its produce in the 
season of lSt)l, and the farmers netted half a million of 
dollars. Wilmington, Elizabeth Cit}^, Goldsboro, are 
other large shipping-points for other districts, but there 
are many others that are marked by mere railway side- 
tracks, where many cars are loaded daily in the season. 
There is a good deal of very enlightened farming down 
there, and, in consequence, there are farmers wliose prof- 
its at the end of a single year are what the mass of men 




A CAROLINA MANSION 

289 



■would call fortunes. On one — the farm most wisely 

managed, perhaps — we tind 170 head of cattle, fiC horses, 

l:)lt hoos, a tUiiry, a saw-mill for the needs of the box- 
es ^ «/ ' 

factory, and a fertilizer-making plant. On this farm 6<io 
iicres were put into truck last year, and oOO were sown 
Avith oats and grass. When one considers how short a 
time it is since the farmers there were exclusively plant- 
ers of cotton, and what a precarious living their meth- 
ods brought, this seems indeed a long stride ahead. 

And this is not true merely of the truck region of the 
coast. '' The low price of cotton and the high price of 
everything else," as one State official put it, " have led 
the farmers, in great numbers, to diversify their industry 
and to raise what they consume at home." More meat 
was killed in North Carolina last year than ever before. 
Hogs, cattle, horses, milk, butter, fruit, vegetables, and 
corn are products that are increasing very rapidly. 
Sheep also are multiplying, though sheep-raising calls 
for so much outlay in guarding the stock against dogs 
that onl}^ men with capital make a business of it. Ra- 
leigh is now supplied with all the milk and butter it uses, 
though not sufficient dairying is yet done to make the 
products articles of export. The result of all this, as 
might have been expected, has been a remarkable re- 
moval of mortgages all over the State within the past 
few years. And tliis prosperity reflects upon the State 
itself, so that her debt is trilling, and at least one issue 
of bonds by the commonwealth rates almost as high as 
the bonds of the Federal government. 

The revolution is also reflected in the cities. Wil- 
mington is a bustling, wide-awake town, with a solid 
and very active business cpiarter, and all the superficial 
signs of a prosperous and ambitious population. Char- 
lotte, the richest city in the State, has invested so heav- 
ilv in cotton-mills and other ventures in various other 

290 



towns and sections that it is said she woukl have a pop- 
uhition of 00,000 were her industries all at home. It 
is doubtful whether the place would then be as inviting 
as it is now, for though it is busy, it is also beautiful. 




^ '•<:: 



Ar'^i " mm 



COUKT-UOUSE AND CITY HALL, WILMINGTON 



Ilaleigh, the capital, wliicli is so well shaded that a 
bii'd\s-eye view of it discloses little else than trees. 
is at once neat and substantial, and rather more North- 
ern than Southern looking, except for the (typically 
Southern) great width of its main streets. And yet 
these are paved and well cared for, besides being busy. 
The city is credited with 17,000 inhabitants, and main- 
tains three cotton -mills, several machine-shops, two 
fertilizer-factories, an oil-mill, a car-works, and several 



candy-factories, one of which is celebrated far beyond 
Raleigli. It is also a trading centre, and has large com- 
mercial establishments. All these businesses are sup- 
plied with local capital, and it is important to add that 
this is generally the case in both the Carolinas. 

Raleigh has several tine educational foundations, but 
one that interested me very much indeed was the Col- 
lege of Au'ricultural and Mecliaiiic Arts. The other 
Southern States possess more or less similar institu- 
tions, maintained with Federal aid, and if they are in 
any great degree as well and even proudly managed as 
this of North Carolina, it is a grand thing, particularly 
where men have been too prone to think it undignified 
to work for themselves. Here we find an expensively 



3%^ 










^-Ji^' C I I '■"iL'^.'A' '*f^-^^-J \( i!if I I n i{\i sdiooi \M) 

>rt /I'rT**' -Skt- - - DOl.MIlOl.II ^ 1{\LII(II 



lU.! 



\s 'r 



housed and well-e(|ui})pe(l institution, whicii, although 
oidy four years old, has already graduated one class, 
two-thirds of whose memlx^rs obtained situations at once. 
IJoth teachers and pupils were ahke (Mithusiastic when 
1 went through the buiklings. I found there a fine 

393 



smithy, a forge-room, a machine-shop (in which stood 
a steam-engine made by the graduates) ; a wood-turn- 
ing department and joiner-work class-room ; a very tine 
chemical laborator}^ presided over by an ambitious Cor- 
nell man ; a model barn, a dairy building, a large ex- 
])erimental fai'm, and an agricultural experiment and 
State weather station. The young men are here litted 
to become intelligent, educated, and practical farmers, 
horticulturists, cattle and stock raisers, dairj'men, as 
well as machinists, carpenters, architects, draughtsmen, 
manufacturers, and contractors. I do not mean to claim 
too much in saying this ; what I do mean is that they 
learn the rudiments of these occupations, as well as to 
use their brains and their hands. A full mathematical 
course is part of the curriculum, and a jnuch more im- 
portant source of strength to each pupil is the associa- 
tion with the ambitious young fellows of the State, and 
the daily intercourse with the able and accomplished 
members of the faculty. Here were some boys from 
very humble homes, and yet so intent upon becoming- 
masters, instead of dependents, as to be found waiting 
on the others at the dining-table in order to earn their 
living while they studied. A certain number of pupils 
are admitted free, subject to an examination in rudi- 
mentary studies. They pay $8 a month for board and 
extras. The others pay $20 a year for tuition in addi- 
tion to the same charge for board and extras. 

But the good Avork of the institution does not stop 
there. The officers reply to all requests for informa- 
tion by the farmers of the State, and hold farmei's' meet- 
ings wherever requested for the discussion of subjects 
connected with practical farming. Dr. II. B. Battle, as 
head of the exj)eriment station, also issues frequent and 
very valuable Indletins, sent free to thousands of farm- 
ers, telling them how to guard against insect pests, 

294 



warnino' them ao-ainst inferior or fraudulent fertilizers, 
discussing methods of farming, explaining how waste 
can be prev^ented, how they can determine the West 
things to grow, and, in a sentence, scattering the most 
practical and most needed advice, in thick pampidets 
as well as mere liy-siieets, among the agriculturists of 
the State. Further yet, the station is pushing an al- 
most unique plan of spreading information by sending 




PHOSPHATE MINES NEAK WILMINGTON 



out stereot3q3ed-plate matter free to the newspapers of 
the State. Alexander Q. Ilalladay, Esq., is the presi- 
dent of the college and its allied farm and stations. 

Leavincr ao-riculture out of further consideration, we 
will observe that, for variety, the resources of the State 
do not depend upon that industry, though it is, of coui'sc, 
mainly and primarily a farming State. But its tur|)en- 

295 



tine stills are a source of revenue, its forests are of great 
extent and value, its lisberies employ about 6000 per- 
sons, gold-mining is carried on in several counties, and 
the quarrying of marble, granite, sandstone, and of Bel- 
gian blocks for the paving of city streets is done in 
man}-- parts of the State. The stor}^ of the traveller 
who, on being shown a beautiful piece of mahogany 
furniture, replied, '' Yes, where I live they make fence 
rails of mahogany," could be paralleled by many citizens 
of western North Carolina if any Avere called upon to 
admire a granite building, for they might truly say that 
in their parts of the State there are towns where all the 
fence posts are made of granite. Coal-mining is a new 
industry in North Carolina, but it is carried on with all 
the rest. There are two coal belts there. A comjiany 
of Northern capitalists is working a rich field of good 
bituminous coal at Egypt, and another Northern com- 
pany owns some mines of what is called semi-anthracite 
a little southwest of that place. At Kings Mountain a 
company has been formed to develop a tin-bearing re- 
gion, which it is thought they can mine ]>rofitably. 

The exporting of grapes and even the manufacture of 
wine have been a source of revenue to North Carolina 
during a quarter of a century. A new and quickened 
interest in these businesses is shown in the gradual mul- 
tiplication of vineyards, and in the profits and growth of 
certain of the older ones, and, since wild grapes are said 
to have grown naturally all over the State, these may 
yet become important industries. Mineral springs of 
more or less celebrity are numerous ; and of })opular re- 
sorts for tourists and invalids, led by the thriving and 
beautiful town of Asheville, there are many, as well as 
sites for ten times as many more, in the healthful and 
picturesque mountain districts. The population of the 
State is no greater tlian that of New York city, but. nn- 

396 



like South Carolina, the whites are nearl}" twice as nu- 
merous as the negroes, the difference (according to the 
last census) being that there were 1,055,382 whites and 
562,565 colored persons. One would argue from tliis 
fact that JSTorth Carolina would attract immigrants in 
greater numl)er than almost any of the more southerly 




NEGKO CEMETEKY AT \V1LMIN<;T(>N 



States, and yet in ISOO there were only 37i2 foreign- 
born persons in the State. John Tiobinson, Esq., the 
Commissioner of Agriculture, says, upon this subject : 
"The immigration into Korth Carolina is largely from 
the New England, IVIiddle, and some of the Northwest- 

S>it7 



ern States, and gives many and much-desired and much- 
valued accessions to sources of material development."" 

ft sc^ems, then, to whatever small extent this increase 
comes, the Old Xortli State is enjoying what the most 
infiuential men in all the Southern States desire and de- 
mand. The South wants men with capital, and not men 
with mei'e hands and energy and willingness to work. 
It wants men who will buy and cultivate })lantatioiis. 
Avho will establish mills, and who will organize corpora- 
tions for the development of its resources. 

The Charleston uVcfr.s- and Courier of November 22, 
185)3, says, " Those who would not make desirable citi- 
zens f</iovld not he encont'iuji'd to seek homes in the 
South." After arguing that those farmers in ^S'ew Eno-. 
land and parts of the West whose farms are poor would 
do well to leave them and go South, it generously as- 
serts that there is room for such new-comei's "as the 
(lermans, Scandiiuivians, Swiss, Scotch, and Yankees '" 
—an intentional compliment, for he adds, " none hut fJie 
hest are good enou(j]i for South Cctroliiia.'^ 

298 



VIII 
WHERE TIME HAS SLUMBERED 

" Mebby Mrs. Cap'ii w ill have one," or, " You'd better 
go .and see Mrs. Cap'n," oi-, " If there's any sicli thing- 
around, mebbe Mrs. Cap'n '11 have it."' These things 
were so often said to the hunter from J^ew York, who 
was down in West Virginia partly for deer, and largely 
for relics of a by-gone era, that he determined to see 
'•Mrs. Cap'n," and to know more about her. There 
seemed to be little to know, and that was told readily in 
answer to his questions, for it was evident that she was 
the most conspicuous woman on the mountain on which 
she lived. All the mountain folk knew her or knew 
about her, but at the same time it became clear to the 
stranger from New York that there was some little mys- 
tery — something kept back. It was said of her that she 
was " more foi-ehanded " than most women, that she was 
very industrious, that she was proud, and " kep' her head 
well up," and that she had been a widow through the 
best part of her life — a, widow so stricken by her be- 
reavement that no man had since been able to make any 
impression upon her affections, though the best men in 
that section had tried. That in itself was peculiar 
enough to make her conspicuous. 

Freely as this was told, it was often accompanied In- 
a manner that led tlie stranger to fancy there was more 
to learn. Ilis failure to break through this reserve 
whetted his curiosity, and one day he went straight to 

299 



the woman herself in lier cabni. The eabni, externally, 
was very like all the rest — a little log house with a stone 
chimney projecting- from one end, ^vitll a roof made of 
those large shingles that they call "clapboards" down 
there, with a row of three small window-panes set in 
the end opposite the chimney for an extra window, in 
addition to the real window that was beside the door- 
wav, and that was also like a window in the daytime, 
and was usually left open to serve as such. Over and 
in front of the door was a rude, ramshackle })orch. It 
was made of a few boards held up at the outer ends 
l)V a l)eam laid across two posts. It was apparently 
maintained to protet-t a flooring of rough logs sunk in 
the ground, l)ut it could shelter them only from such 
I'are rains as fell straight down from overhead, so that 
])erhaps its best service was to accommodate several 
bunches of dried or drying "yarbs." They hung at just 
the right height beneath the porch to hit a visitor's hat, 
and cause him to glance quickly around for the assailant 
who had made a target of his head-gear. The house or 
cabin stood in a little clearing of much trampled and 
furrowed dirt, with its chimney end towards the road, 
and its door and porch facing the rest of "Mrs. Cap'n's" 
l)uildings — a corn and tobacco house, a stable, and a pig- 
sty — properties not altogether uncommon in those moun- 
tains, and yet not so common but that they reflected 
pi-oudlv upon the family as one that was ])retty well-to- 
do as things go in that country. The corn-house and 
])igsty were commonplace, but the stable was one to ar- 
rest a stranger's attention. It was built on the plan of 
a canary-cage, with its sides almost as open as if you 
were expected to hand in hay by the half-bale to the 
horse through the space between the boards, or to ])ass 
him in a pail of water whenever he was thirsty, without 
bothering with the door. And even that kind of stable 

300 



is commonplace in AYest \'irginia, for that is the kind 
they build there, either because the climate is never se- 
vere, or ])0ssibly because a great storm would blow right 
through the building without carrying it away, as the 
winds pass through a net-work banner in the streets. 
But that is a mere ignorant conjecture, such as a stran- 
ger might make, since West Virginia is one of the few 
of our commonwealths that are free from reallv big- 
American weather, with all that the term implies. 

"Can I come in^" said the hunter from New York, 
]iausing in the open doorway. 

" Yaas ; come in and hev a warm," said a man who 
sat before some blazing logs in the deep tall recess in the 
Dutch chimney. " Draw up a cheer by the hre and 
hev a warm." 

'^s this Mrs. Captain's?" 

" Yaas,"" said the man ; '' Mrs. Ca])'n is my sister. 
She's up above. That's her a-shakin' things with her 
loom — makin' a little rag kyarpet fer Killis Kyar's folks. 
Sence Killis Kyar's moved into his new house on the 
valley road his gals is mighty ticky. And yit " (thought- 
fully) '* the}^ ain't notliin' like's ticky as some. When 
I see the young folks that's so awful nice about lievin' 
kyarpets on the floor an' curtings on the winders and 
that-all, I often say to 'em, ' Ef you-all could see how 
yer fathers lived without none of them things, 3'ou-all 
wouldn't be so ticky.' " 

" Ijut you've got a carpet here — and curtains," said 
the stranger. 

" Oh, -iw^ hev,"' said the man. "That's Mrs. Cap'n — 
she's different." 

It was evident that she and much besides were differ- 
ent, as the old man said. We shall see tliat most moun- 
tain cabins are bare (floor, ceiling, walls, and all), but 
here was a floor-covering of rag-carpet, and the window 

802 



liad a small section of a yellow lace curtain drawn across 
it, and the ceiling was clean, instead of being grimy Avith 
smoke like most others. And there were several tin- 
types grou})ed together not inartistically on one wall, 
and some gay lithcjgraphs, such as one gets at a country 
grocery, on the opposite wall. Two long mountain rifles, 
made pretty by brass- w(3rk inlaid in the stocks, orna- 
mented two rafters, and some powder-horns and pouches 
and a dog-horn — the very sort of curios the hunter was 
seeking — hung upon other rafters. But the marvel of 
marvels in the cabin was one of the beds. It Avas a cen- 
tury-old " four-poster," standing so high above the floor 
that no man could reach the tops of the solid fluted posts, 
and no man would cai'e to meet with such a mishap as 
to fall from the bedding to the floor. As the stranger 
looked al)<)ut him the old man followed his eyes, and 
commented upon whatever they took in. 

"• Yaas," said he ; " Mrs. Ca]i'n is ditferent, you know. 
That's hern, that big bed. ]\[e and young Ca}Vn, when 
he's to home, sleeps on that low bed thar" (nodding at 
an ordinary bed made np in a sort of low open box that 
sat on the floor without legs beneath it). "Them guns 
and things she takes fer the kyarpets and jeans she 
weaves, and sells 'em to strangers like you-all fer ten 
times what they're wuth. Them picters is hern too." 

'' Everybody speaks highly of her ; she must be a re- 
markable woman," said the stranger. 

" Waal, 'tain't that., so much," said the old man. paus- 
ing, and putfing at his ])ipe, and reflecting rather dream- 
ily as he began to talk. " I reckon it's the hard times 
she's had, an' the way she's bore up through it. Her 
husband bein' killed so ([uick, an' her mournin' for him 
so stiddy. I reckon that's it." 

" How was he killed C 

'•The Cap'n \ lie was shot takin' some deserters into 



camp ; ambushed not more'ii a mile away from here. I 
reckon that's ^vhy folks is so set towards her. He on'v 
was here a short time, but he stuck to her 'bout all the. 
time he could spare. ( )ui' house was his quarters till the 
(leneral give orders to forward the hull of the army on 
farther west. I was away, "listed on the Confed'rit side ; 
but I'm Union now — because the Cap'n was Union. 
Anjdiow, 'most nine in ten 'round here was always Un- 
ion. My sister was Union soon as she seen the Cap'n, 
tho' she hadn't been before. That's near thirty year 
ago, and she's been UKjurnin' and takin' on ever since. 
They were jist surely cut out for one another, and were 
agreed to be married, an' evervthing was arranged — and 
then he was andjushed ])y some friends of the men he 
was arrestin'." 

'' What was his name V 

"Thar, now," said the old man, "she kin tell you 
that. I never could just rightly remember it. Tier 
bein' called ' Mrs. C^ap'n ' by they-all just drove his name 
outer my head. He was from Ohier — I know f/iat 
— and had a name you couldn't take hold of easy, 
endin' in ' berger,' or — no. maybe it wasu't just ' berger ' 
neither." 

At this point a cessation of the regular thud-thud of 
the loom overhead gave notice that Mrs. Oip'n was rest- 
ino". A moment later her voice sounded down through 
the square hole at the top of the ladder that served for 
the stairs to tlie second story. 

" Pole !" the voice said ; " what does he want, Pole t" 

" Well, I declare ; that's so,'' said the old man ; " what 
did you want — anything 'sides a warm ^ I reckon may- 
be you'd like a cold slice." 

" No," said the stranger ; " I came to see if I could 
buy an old gun, like one of those I see you have there. 
I heard your sister had one or two." 

304 




-I %■ 



.isc t,^* 



t^^ 






■' Keckon you\l better come down, Tisli,'' said the old 
man. "He wants one o' your rides, maybe.'' 

With much deliberation and extraordinary disturbance 
of mind over her skirts, which were as contumacious as 
thtn^ might be expected to be when forced through a 
tw(j-foot hole and down a ladder nailed against a wall, 
Mrs. Letitia Cap'n (for Tish is the diminutive of Letitia 
in those mountains) came down into the main room. Ex- 
cept that she was not as shy as most mountain women in 
the presence of a strange man, she was very like the rest 
— a, spare, angular woman of middle age, in a dress that 
Avas as simple as a \voman's dress could be, and that con- 
sisted of a plain waist of pink calico, and a plain skirt 
of the same stuff that no more than reached to her shoe- 
tops. She differed from the other women whom the 
stranger had seen thereabouts in that she M'ore a white 
apron — a supei'liuity trifling in itself, and yet impressive 
in the effect of neatness and self-respect that it ]>roduced. 
Perhaps, too, she was more comely than her neighbors 
in the sight of the mountain men. They could make 
closer comparisons than a stranger might. To this 
stranger who now regarded her she had, in common with 
the rest, the colorless hps, the pinched features, and the 
lack-lustre eyes of all the typical, badly nourished, over- 
w^orked, dyspeptic mountain folk. At the suggestion of 
an offer of his right hand by the stranger, she put both 
her long bony hands behind her back — not I'udely, but 
from a blending of awkwardness and shyness. The 
bartering for the gun being over, the stranger remarked 
that he and her brother had been speaking of '' the Cap- 
tain." Something very like a spark of life lighted up 
the woman's eyes when the subject was introduced, and 
she stepped to the wall and took down two ])ictures — 
both tintypes. 

"This is Ca])*n's picture," said she. handling one ten- 

306 



dei'ly, and otfering it witli a little cnthusiasin, as some- 
thing certain to be admired, though it was a wretchedly 
bad piece of workmanship. It wiis a ])hotograph of a 
soldier in uniform. 

"And hain't this one like him T' she asked, ]iutting 
the other card in the stranger's hand. He saw no re- 
semblance to one in the other: but understanding that 
even a bad ]>icture may convey a jierfect ])oi'traiture to 
the mind of one who knows the face that is hinted at, 
he avoided her question, and asked whose was the sec 
ond portrait. 

'* It's young Cap'n's — my son's," said she, very proud- 
ly ; "and I can see the Cap'n growing u]) in him all 
over again when I look ;it him. To me it's just like 
the Cap'n had come back, fei* they're both the same 
age. Young Cap'n is about twenty-nine, and so was 
his father when he was kilh^l." 

The stranger looked at the tinty})es more closel^y. To 
him the face of the soldier ai)peared that of a vain and 
weak man. The low brow, the immense mustachios 
curled up at the ends, the small eyes, and the abnormal 
breadth of the face at the cheek- l)ones suggested some- 
thing that quite startled him — the possibility that the 
Captain had been such a man as might, had he lived, 
have broken the heart of the woman who now held his 
memory so sacred. 

"Young Cap'n's on the railroad — telegraph o])era- 
tin','' said she. "When he comes home I see him and 
his father together. You hain't from Older, be yer? 
Xo !' 'Cause there wuz a man from Older 'bout ten 
year ago — I just can't happen to think out his name — 
and he told 'round that the Cap'n was married a'ready 
when he 'listed fer the war. Pole here — my brother — 
might "a' found out what the man knew, if he'd a-been 
more keerful. I was s(jrry fer what you don(i, Pole, 

a07 



and you know it — gittin' down 3'our ole rifle and hunt- 
in' the man onten the country, the way you done." 

" I'd like to 'a' raised my ole gyurl rifle on that crit- 
ter till his head darkened the sight," said the old hunter. 
" That's all me and my ole gyurl wanted that time, 
Tish. Reckon I was too keerful with Bird Jiney, too, 
mebbe." 

" I don't say you was, Pole," Mrs. Captain replied, 
" fer Bird Jiney was ornery." 

She then explained to the stranger that a neighbor of 
the name of Jiney — a man so contemptible that even 
his folks were " mean " (a hard thing to say of any one) 
— had " dar'd " to speak slightingly of her and her wid- 
owhood, and that, after giving him fair warning to 
leave the country, her brother had met him on a moun- 
tain road, and jerking him from the back of his horse, 
had dropped him over the edge of a cliff. Mrs. Captain 
added that Jiney had not been killed, but, after his 
broken bones had healed, had gone away " to some of 
them cities in old A'irginia" to start life over again. 
After an interval of several years he had sent her the 
bed on which she had slept ever since — the huge serai- 
royal foui'-poster close by — far and away the most im- 
pressive, pretentious, and costly article of household fur- 
niture in the county. Mrs. Captain had accepted the 
gift as a peace-offering, she being a very thrifty woman, 
and the bed being a thing that coukl not be sent back 
without great expense. After that she had expected 
Bird Jiney to limp back into the neighborhood among 
his friends and family, but he had never been heard 
from again. 

It was evident that brother Pole's energy in protect- 
ing his sister was enough to account for the brake on 
the gossiping tendencies of the neighbors. He made it 
'•unhealthy," as they say out West, to talk too much 

308 




THE CIKCUIT-KIDER 



about Mrs. Cup* 11, even though no one had anything but 
praise to speak of her. 

'• They-all round here says I'm proud, nieblje," Mrs. 
Captain continued; "but Fiu only proud fer }ny lius- 
band. If he'd 'a' lived I'd 'a' been better ott' than any 
of they-all. and since he died I'm Ixnind to work and 
save money, and live's near as I kiji to tlie \va\' he'd 
have had me. If I'mputtin" on. Tin on'y puttin' on fer 
Cap'n — hain't I, Pole ^ Mebbe he's where he kin see 
me and the kyarpet like he told me he had in Ohier, 
and the curting and — and the bed — and kin see me 
workin' and doing my best.'' 

" She don't keer fer herself," said the old man ; '' she 
on'y thinks of him and young Cap'n. I never see any- 
thing like it.*' 

"And I don't keer if you're f'om Ohier er not," she 
went on; "fer, tell the truth, your voice did naturally 
remind me of Ohier, somehow. I don't keer if Cap'n 
t/yjs married 'fore he 'listed in the war.'' 

" Tish !" said the brother, warningly. 

"Xo, Pole; mebbe it don't sound tittin' — and it ain't 
iittin' — fer any one to say that; and we know he 
conhhi''t 'a' been married : but yit if Cap'n had a 
wife in Ohier I pity her with all my heart. lie 
might have had her, Pole, hut I jxxt ceiidntl ij JkkI Jiis 
lorr."" 

The stranger who told me of that adventure, as we 
sat before a log tire in a West A'ii-ginia tavern, told it 
to illustrate something of the peculiarity of the moun- 
tain people — not so much by the woman's history, f<jr 
that was peculiar even there, l)ut by the setting and ac- 
cessories of the tale. After that I looked in many a 
cabin in the hope that I might see the great bed, which 
stood transfigured in my mind as a sort of altar, but I 
never saw it or the woman, who, without acknowledg- 



ing or even realizing' her fault, retrieved ii so complete- 
ly afterwards. 

The mountain districts of West A^irginia are as strange 
in tlieir })rimitive population as in their tossed and 
tumljled sui'face. The cities and larger towns and many 
of the cultivated valleys compare favorably with those 
of other States, and it is not of them that I am writing. 
But the greater part of the State is made up of moun- 
tains, and it is there that we see how unique are her 
people and their ways. New Mexico, with its glare of 
sands and its half-Mexican ]X)pulation, is more foreign, 
but it is not so picturesque nor nearly so peculiar as 
this abiding-place of a genuine and pure American poj)- 
ulation, whose civilization has stood still for more than 
a century. AVe go to Europe to seek what is less 
strange; indeed, it is a far journey to such another 
anachronism as West Virginia. Those reformers who 
fancy that legislation is a short-cut to virtue, and that 
nature can be altered bv a change of statutes, might al- 
most find their dreams realized in West A^irginia ; for 
when that State was cut off fi'om Old Virginia, leav- 
ing the old Mother of Presidents with her original 
boundaries on the West, the |)rogress of two centuries 
and a half seemed also to have been cut off. And West 
A'irginia began, thirty years ago, where old Virginia 
did, with a civilization that is to-day what might be ex- 
pected of thirty years of settlement in a rough country. 

It is not strange that travellers should find the scen- 
ery and flora of the Alleghanies so similar from Penn- 
sylvania to Georgia that a blindfolded man taken to 
any part of them and uncovered could never tell in 
whicli State he stood. The mountain altitudes regu- 
late the climate, and that makes all the rest nearly uni- 
form. But it is strange to find the people so much 
alike from end to end of the great chain of mountains 

311 



— to find them all so backward and simple, all so tall 
and spare and angular, all speaking so nearly the same 
dialect, all living in cabins of nearly one pattern, and 
copying one another even in such little details as lead 
them to use one sort of broad-strap harness that one 
sees put upon no other horses than theirs. To be sure, 
the valleys run parallel up and down the ranges, but 
there are passes from east to west, and through some 
uf these are run latter-day railroads, with Pullman 
coaches, "diners," and the accompaniments of telephone 
and telegraph. And there are old railroads, too, which 
long ago l:)roke through the fastnesses, and carried the 
nineteenth centur}^ in their wake. Yet the old life 
turned not aside. It still follows the trend of the val- 
leys. And the new life hurries through as if it was 
conveyed " in bond," as we send goods through Canada 
to Chicago. At any point on tlie frontier or in the 
heart of West Virginia you step from your Pullman to 
the wagon that awaits you, and the length of a morn- 
ino-'s ''constitutional" finds you in the dominion of a 
belated century. The time is right by your watch, but 
your pocket-calendar is a hundred years too far ahead. 
It is true that the present era, jars the past in places. 
The Chesapeake and Ohio liailroad, which bisects the 
State, is modern even to elegance, but thousands of the 
people near its steel threads have never ridden over a 
mile of it. That very modern statesman W. L. Wilson 
hails from there ; but tlie life in the mountains is so 
ancient that George Washington, were he back on earth, 
would say, after a tour of the whole country, " At last, 
here I find a part of the world as I left it." 

I went into West Virginia over the Pennsylvania 
border last summer, and put up at a mountain -spring 
resort. There was a clashing of two centuries there. 
The arch city maiden in white flannel was there trim- 

312 




A FOOT-BKIUGE, WEST VIKGIKIA 

ming her hat with butterflies, sticking a hat -pin into 
them at twenty places, '• so as to find their hearts and 
kill them without hurting them too much," and at 
night she banged out Sousa's last two-step in a way 
that filled the old woods with the breath of a Michigan 
Avenue boarding-house. But in the early morning, 
when her flannel suit hung over a cliair, and her ''white 
sailor" sat the top of the bedroom pitcher with a 
rakish cant to one side, the squirrels and the locusts and 
katydids had the forests to themselves, and the early 
stirrers on the mountain roads were the old-time West- 
Virginians, as simple and genuine as fresh air. 

Observing that the strangei's at the Springs came 
from unthought-of distances to drink the sulphur water 
that bubbled up in tiie meadow by the hotel, they too 
paid the tardy century the compliment of drinking its 
catholicon. But with never-failing shyness the}' always 

318 



came at sumip, without noise or hustle, tli(»ughiii strong 
force, to fill their pails and cans and hlickeys and carry 
the liquid away. The\' and the nineteenth - century 
boarders were impressed and cozened by the same fact : 
the water smelled so bad and tested so nasty that it 
must certainly be good medicine. I never will forget 
how tli^e mountaineers interested me. The women came 
sidewise, bobbing lightly up and down on the horses, 
with both feet side by side on the animal's ribs. The 
capes of their calico hoods waved prettily in the breeze. 
The teamsters knew better than to sit on the jolting 
wagons that pounded over the rocks in the roads, so 
each saddled tlie left-hand horse of his team and rode at 
ease, while the horses tugged up the hills with a force 
that had to be met and eased by means of the harness 
of broad straps which is the horse-gear of the entire 
A]ipalachian world. The little l)oys brought trousers 
that did not know their shoes, never having met them, 
and jackets that mimicked the trousers by being too 
short — in the sleeves as well as the body. The little 
girls were bare at both toj) and toe, as befitted creatures 
that did not have to go into the thorn and bramble 
thickets, as the boys had to do in order to be boys. But 
their tubular cotton drawers desir'ed t(j see as much of 
life as possible, and therefore readied below their little 
dresses. All alike were simple, honest, unol)trusive, and 
shy. Notiiing but a "bush-meeting" seemed powerful 
enouiih to bring them out in force, but at that thev 
opened their shells like clams at high-water — for evei'v- 
where, from one end of the mountains to the other, 
they are deeply religious. They are " Baptis" " and 
"Methodys" wherever I saw them. Mr. Remington 
and I met one in the Potts Creek Valley, over near 
the old Virginia line, who had been out to Oregon, 
and was doinir well there, but came back to Potts 

314 



C'l'eek "because they didn't respect the Sabljath out 
AVest." 

There are church buildings in the villages, but the 
villages are few and far apart, and in this particuhir 
place the custom was for some preacher to spring as it 
were out of no\vhei'(^ and to announce a bush-nieetino- 
by means of a written placard luiiled to a tree by the 
s]iring. It was to be held at two o'clock in a certain 
]iatch of woods, so commonly and frequently the scene 
of such meetings that the rude benches made of planks 
nailed to tree stumps were always there, and kej)t in 
good order, apparently by a devout mountaineer who 
lived in the nearest cabin. The meeting lasted less 
than an hour, bnt the peo|)le made it the affair of a day. 
They came from as far as the news of the meeting luul 
l)een carried by the equestrians and wngoners who had 
I'eined u}) at sight of the j)lacai'd and halted '* to see 
what's a-ffoin' on.'' Some, therefore, had Ix^en obliged 
to set out soon after breakfast — and that would not 
make a long journey where six miles of road may loop 
over 'the top of a tremendous mountain, up which tlie 
horses crawl, and the more huiuane men lead instead of 
riding them. Before n(^on the wagons began to coiue 
in. Bars were let down at various points near the 
camp-gruund, and the teams were tethered to the trees 
in half a dozen scattered parts of the woods. The 
wagons were such as one sees all ov(M' the land, made 
in Racine, Wisconsin, or South Bend, Indiana, or Cort- 
land. New York. Out of them came men and women, 
gii'ls and boys, and even babies. By noon nearly all the 
worshippers were on hand — strolling fi'om hitching- 
])lace to hitching -place to see who had come, and to 
gossi]) with friends and acquaintances. It is wondei'ful 
how far and wide men are known to one another in 
these mountains. The peoi)le are sociable in the ex- 



treine. We would call them " shiftless '' as a race, for it 
is a fact that they have inherited the discouragement of 
their ancestors, who must have earl)^ given op the effort 
to wrest more than a bare living out of agriculture in a 
territory tliat is rich only where it is mined for coal and 
iron and stone. 

Wherever nature refuses a living in return for fair 
effort, luimanity becomes stagnant or demoralized, and 
in AVest Virginia, still the great game-preserve for the 
Middle and Atlantic States, the rod and gun were early 
found to be more profitable companions than the plough 
and shovel, so that a race of hunters developed there 
— hunters with the patience and plnlosophy that the 
Indian emphasizes, ami that lead all such men, white, 
red, or black, to snub Dame Fortune if she comes with 
that heavy tax of care and responsibility which we call 
civilization, and wliich the woodsman sees through as if 
it were plate-glass, and regards as bringing very little at 
a very great cost. 

Tlierefore these mountain folk take a great deal of 
time and pains to know one another, and having this 
wide ac(juaintance, they solder it to their lives with 
incessant gatherings like this bush-meeting. They hold 
" lotr-rollino-s" and " corn-shuckings'' and dances and 
shooting-matches and " gander-pulls," and one thing or 
another, to make up a circle of gatherings that reaches 
around the whole year, and closes around every life in 
each district. I paid a visit one day at the tip-top of a 
mountain and at the end of a trail that hadn't one other 
cabin by its side. To me the cabin seemed a mere ac- 
centuation of a solitude I had scarcely believed possible. 
I remarked to the woman of the cabin that I should 
have thought she would be very lonely. Lonely 'i That 
showed my ignorance. Why, there never passed a day 
on which some of the "neighbors" did not drop in, and 

316 . 



at least once or twice a weelc she would •' j^it to mj 
'round 'mono- the neit>'hborhood women."" Then there 
■was "allers some of the neighborhood chillnn and her 
cliillnn ])assin' to and fro: an' on"y night before last 
there was a- corn-slinckin' and a dance here; on"v it 
wasn't so big but what the beds was left standin', 'stid 
of bein' sot out, same as when we hev a big dance; an' 
my man's got some corn to shuck yit." 

To return to the out-door church service, the inter- 
change of visits was followed bv a i-eturn of each ])arty 
to its wagon for a ])icnic dinner upon whatever had been 
brought along — cold corn pone principally. AVhen all 
the worshipi)ers gathered at the bush-meeting it was 
seen not to be very different from a Northern camp- 
meeting, sucli as one sees in New Jersey pai'ticularly. 
The men wore soft felt hats and long beards, and seemed 
never to have combed their hair. The women had on 
broad-brimmed l)lack straw hats, such as I was told a 
mountain woman is able t(j keep and use for '" Sunday 
best" for a quarter of a century. The boys looked 
boldly at the girls, and the girls looked shdy at the boys 
out of the tails of their eyes. The sndden rattling of a 
wao-on amono; the trees, followed bv a loud '' AVlioa 
there I" occasionally sounded above the prayer and song. 
Some of the men who came without women stood away 
from the worshippers, smoking, and talking as country- 
men converse, in broken sentences wide apart, with the 
fractures filled up l\y vigorous tobacco-chewing. The 
jireacher was a woman — a " ]\[rs. Lawsou of Kentucky, 
the celebrated evangelist." She brought a young man 
with her to " oj)en with pi'ayer," and to pass arouiul 
his hat, and after his prayer she delivered an address, 
which, if it were right to ]iass judgment upon it, I should 
declare to be the most noisy and the least thoughtful 
sermon or talk that T ever heard. There was singing 

318 



before and after lier address, and it was noticeable that 
though the young man liacl to sing nearly the whole 
first verse entirely alone, the people afterwards sang 
the remaining verses, though there was not a book or 
printed cojiy of the hymn in the forest. 

In the eastern ])art of the State, nearer to Virginia, I 
found that the circuit-rider still ministers to the religious 
welfare of the mountain folks. There are neat little 
white and green chui'ch l)uildings in the valleys, but 
they are opened only once a, month. About as often 
as that, and in some cases regularly, the circuit-rider 
sends word of his coming to the elders or deacons, or 
puts the notice in the countr}' ]mper if one is published 
near the meeting-house, and on tlie given day he appears 
on horseback, with a few extra belongings and his Bible 
and song- book rolled up behinil him on his saddle. 
Wherever he preaches he has a large meeting, and he 
"boards 'round'' with the religious families in the old 
time-honored way. But to end the glimpse I got of the 
State in the summer requires a mention of the moun- 
taineer laundress at " the Springs." Her name was 
''Miss" Sony Bowyer — ''Miss" meaning Mistress, and 
''Sony" being the abbreviation of the not uncommon 
name of Lasonia. She was down at the spring with 
her ])itcher for the day's drinking water. 

•• l\] like to send up my washing to you this after- 
noon," said I. 

"I'd ruther you wouldn't, not to-day," said "Miss" 
Bowyer. " It would just certainly muddle me. You 
see how it is : I'm ironin' the Adamses now, and I hate 
ter mix the families up. I'm so afraid there'll be some 
mistake, so I wash and iron each family separate. To- 
day I'm ironin' the Adamses, and in the morning Fll 
wash the Browns. In the afternoon I'll iron the 
Browns, and by Wednesday TU take up — What's 

819 



your name ? Ealph ? Yes, by Wednesday 111 be able 
to wash the Ralphs." 

Virginia, according to the historians, was settled in 
1607 ; and West Virginia, the territory west of the 
mountains, was invaded by settlers nearly a century 
and a half later — in 1750. " Many a young man," as 
I read somewhere, " married the girl of his choice, and, 
with axe in belt and rifle on shoulder, accom])anied by 
his bride, started out to locate on a purchase of land 
he had made in the wnld but beautiful new country." 
Beautiful it is to-day, and very largely wild. The pictu- 
resque young pioneer felled trees, made logs, and put 
up a cabin, raising a chimney of rough stones at the 
end of the shanty against the arrival of the winter, if 
not to provide for immediate culinary needs. He hung 
his rifle and pouch and powder-horn on the rafters, and 
his wife got a spinning-wheel and loom somehow from 
old Virginia. As schools did not follow him into the 
woods he grew up with a mind as placid as a mill-pond, 
unruffled by any of those dreams and doubts which in 
other minds elsewhere became the fathers and mothers 
of progress. All that, says the historian, was in and 
after 1750, and yet it is very little different now in by 
far the greater part of West Virginia. The cabins are 
precisely the same as the first pioneer would have built 
when he let g-o his faithful bride's hand and began to 
swing his axe. The flintlock rifle, nearly seven feet 
long, that he first shouldered, he ordered cut down, and 
cut down again, in Tlichmond and Baltimore, as his 
carelessness allowed the saltpetre to corrode the pan ; 
and at one time or another he allowed the gunsmith to 
tear off the flintlock and make his piece a " cushion " 
gun — that being what he calls a rifle that fires by means 
of a percussion-cap. Even the Winchester is creeping 
into the cabins now. The young bride, reproduced in 

320 




THE UNITED STATES MAIL IN THE MOUNTAINS 



her progeny, is slowly giving np the use of her spinning- 
Avheel and loom, because there is no profit in the won- 
drous jean she makes, at less than a dollar a yard, and 
3'et factory jean brings only a few cents. Nevertheless, 
there is still some call for her art to-day. Plenty of 
mountain folk are wearing homespun stuff from their 
bodies outward, and I saw two spinning-wheels and two 
X 321 



looms at work in one small vallev, besides hearino* of at 
least one other pair of these hist-centiiry machines in a 
cabin I did not visit. 

The greatest ditt'ei'ence l)et\veen the |)resent time and 
the long ago is seen in tli(^ presence of nnmerons free 
schools all over the mountains, and alread}' they are 
awakening the people. 

1 made notes of the })rimitive out-door and in-door 
seenes in the parts of AVest A^irginia where I wandered, 
and perhaps nothing that I could do would serve the 
purpose better than to smoothly transcribe them with- 
out their losing the freshness of the views they re- 
flect. The scenery is the same from the middle of 
Pennsylvania to (4eorgia — the same rounded, ^vooded 
mountains ; the same green, often fertile vallevs. check- 
erboarded with farms; the same stone-strewn water- 
courses brawling down the hill-sides ; the same frequent, 
almost general, forests ; the same few i-oatls and many 
trails; the same log cal)ins; the same clearings. Every- 
where the same deep bine hangs overhead, aiul the 
mountains turn from near-by green to distant purple. 
The wood fires everywhere send u]) thin blue veils of 
smoke above the cabins, and the scenes in which human- 
ity Jigures are played l)y chai'acters that are everywhere 
very much alike. Perhaps in the North there are moi'e 
covered l)ridges, but the rule, over the entire mountain 
svstem, is for the horses and wagons to ci'oss the streams 
1)V means of fords over " branches"* and creeks that ai'e 
floored with great thicknesses of slialy, flat, smooth 
stones. The pedestrians get over the streams by means 
of foot-l)i'idges, some of which are mei'e ti-ee trunks rest- 
ing on cross-bucks, antl some of which are (]uite orna- 
mental though sim])le suspension-bi'idges. with certainly 
one hand-i-ail. if not two, beside the planking. 

It's a horseback country. There are main roads and 

3'^2 



there are wagons to use upon them, but they are both 
'' valley improvements/" the jn'oducts of the greater fer- 
tility of the lowlands, where the '•quality" lived as 
planters before tlie war and worked large tracts with 
slaves, or where the small farms of the poor whites be- 
gat a ]M-osperous^middle class between the quality folk 
and the mountaineers. Ihit a great population lives on 
the mountain - sides and mountain - tops, along bridle- 
]>aths that are mere trails, and these are not at all fit 
for wagoneering. 

It has never occurred to any one to clear most of 
these trails. They run iij) and down the steepest in- 
clines that a horse can climb, and they wind through 
forests anil jungles of low growth so dense that I had 
to buy canvas "chaps" or leggings to ward off the 
thorns. Nevertheless I met men, and even women, on 
these trails who were dressed just as they would be at 
home, ami who got throuo-h without tatters — how, I 
don't know. ( )ften the vegetation was so thick that if 
my com i)an ions or I halted for even less than a minute, 
those who kept on were totally lost to view. This wild- 
ness is on tlie steep hill-sides. "Wherever there is a bench 
or a ]ilateau one comes ii])on a clearing hei'e and there, 
with fields sown in oats, ]iotatoes, and buckwheat, and 
perhaps a little tobacco, to be rolled into twists for home 
consumption and for barter with the " neigh borhootl 
men."" 

It is on the wagon roads that one meets the greater 
number of people, but the roads are not exactly Parisian 
boulevards. Those I'oads that cross the mountains have 
a (pieer way of going into ])ai'tnei'ship with the streams. 
Sometimes they run up the sti'eams. so that at high- 
water a farmer fording his way looks like a human 
Neptune floating in his wagon, while his horses, up to 
their bellies in the crystal water, show neither legs nor 

•623 



flippers. Sometimes the stream abandons its bed and 
takes to the roadway for a piece, each such interchange 
by the one or the other being made to get a clear right 
of way tlirough the tree-cluttered, bowlder-strewn region. 
Down in the valleys the roads are latticed in by the 
very tallest fences that are anywhere used by farmers. 
They are called stake-and-ridered fences, and are made 
of from seven to eleven rails laid zigzag, one pile of 
bars set this way and the next pile set the other wa}^ 
with at least one "rider," and sometimes two, perched 
on tall crossed poles above the rest. Thus does West 
Virginia pay generous tribute to the agility of her 
mountain-bred cattle, poor and thin to look at or get 
milk or beef from, yet able to bound about like self- 
propelling rubber balls. 

Between these towering gridiron fences one meets 
the people. Ah I those generous, hospitable, manly, 
frank, and narrow-minded people! Now it is two 
women that one meets — a mother and daughter, both 
on one horse, the mother on the saddle and the daugh- 
ter behind her on an old shawl. They sit as if the 
horse was a chair, with their four shoes in a row, 
and their big hoods bobbing in unison. Next comes a 
farmer astride his steed, with a sack of meal in front of 
him, the wind blowing the front of his soft hat up 
ao'ainst the crown, and the horse's sides working his 
trouser-legs up so as to show his blue and white home- 
knit woollen stockings. All along the sides of the road 
are pigs — the Africans of the brute creation — grunting 
contentedly, and eating, and clinging to the places 
where the sun is hottest. Deer-hounds skulk along 
wherever there are houses — the instruments of a short- 
sighted people for the ruin of the game which brings 
them not merely food, but the generous patronage of 
holiday huntsmen from all over the North and East. 

334 




_ 'jiV^ 




A PKIVATE HUNTER 



And here comes a wa.^oii with its driver a-hoi'sehaclc, 
drivint^- two of tlie t'oui' horses that are hitched l)y a 
net-work of Ijroad bhick leather hands to a runihlin;:;' 
o'l'een hox-wag-on, h:)aded either with hnnb<'r. stonf% oi' 
c()iMu you may be sure. The district doctor, certain to 
be the only " citilied " man in a rutle district, comes 
lollo[)ing aloiiii; on a better horse than liis neighbors 
own, witli his medicines in a, leather roll on the back of 
his saddle, under his coat-tails. 

'' What sort of cases make up your ])i'actice, doctor?" 

" Dyspepsia and child-bii'th — that is about all," he 
says, s])eaking the good English he learned at home in 
old A^irginia and in college. 

'' And gunshot wountls f' 

" Oidy accidental ones, and those very rarely," he 
i-e])lies. 

"What of the morals of the peo[)le back in the 
mountains, doctor ^" 

'•They have their (^wn code, sir; one that differs 
slightly from that of more polishe<l folk, Ijut it is hon- 
est. They do not regard it as criminal to make moon- 
shine whiskey. The}' make it because that is the oidy 
way they can get it. i\[arriages which you would say 
might better have been hurried are not uncommon, but 
here they ]n'eserve good names unharmed. There is 
little or no laxness beyond that. There is veiy little 
vagabondage of any sort. We have no tramps, no 
thieves, exce})t a few wlio filch corn and meat rather 
than i)eg for it. Ambushing has not been practised for 
a hjug time, and only one murder has been committed 
in many years in the vei*y large district in which I 
practise. Dog- ])oisoning by ]n'ivate hunters is the 
woi'st crime that is rampant. Uy-the-way, here comes 
a private hunter now." 

It was Daniel l>oone come l)ack, in woollen clothes 



# 



instead of Inick-skiii, 
and in a soft felt hat 
instead of a "coon skin 

ca]). His talllitiielig- ;-' "^ 

ni'e came rai)idly. for 

his strides were lono v _,^ ^ , 

and light — a natural 
man who thought 
nothing of sti'iding 
like that from sunrise 

until long after dark. % 

Over his shoulder he J 

cari'ied a long old- §_ 

fashioned rifle, and - .'" 

slung from his neck W .y-"" 

by a strap and leather 
thong were his pow- 
der-horn, and his shot- OI,D MOUNTAIN TYPK 

])ouch, (with its deer- 
horn ''charger"" for measuring the powder, and its hent- 
wire hook crowded with cotton, "patches'' to wra]) 
around the bullets). Tie had moccasins on his feet, and 
his trousers were tied tight around the ankles with 
])rown twine. lie was called a " private liunter " because 
he hunted b_v and foi' himself, without the dogs that 
are unleashed for strangers by men who hunt for pay. 
Pretty nearly ever)' mountain man is a "private hunter.'' 

"You })rivate hunters hate the dogs, and drop ])oi- 
soned meat about to kill t Iumu." 1 so spoke. 

" Ya-a-s," said the private hunter. " lieckon some of 
'em does." 

" Why r 

" 'Cause the dogs is driving the game away. Ever^v 
season we has to go furtlu;r and fui'ther away, and the 
<leer gits sca'cer and sca'cer."' 

827 



''I'll tell you what you do," said I, "poison all the 
<logs you can. I am sorry to give you that advice, be- 
cause the dog's are better than the men who use them — 
in fact, a good dog is better than any man. But keep 
on poisoning them." 

The private hunter went off marvelling, for he knew 
that the jolly doctor l)y my side had the best dogs in 
the country. So did I. 

" Strange advice to give," said the doctor, look- 
ing after the hunter, " for we've been saying that 
the dog -poisoner is the meanest varmint in the 
woods. I hunt with dogs myself, but I reckon you're 
right." 

" AVhy do you do it ? You surely know better." 

" Oh, merely because everybody else does. It's got 
so that we cannot get deer without the dogs ; and even 
then w^e have to go ten miles farther from the railroad." 

'"Eve tem])ted me and I ate,'" said I. " AVell, soon 
you will go without eating — venison, at any rate." 

We rode on, antl presently the doctor met a patient. 
The meeting was peculiar, since it took place when both 
men were in the middh^ of a rushing stream, whose wa- 
ters brawled over their stony course and sent up little 
tongues that licked the knees of the horses. The pa- 
tient wore a big soft hat and overcoat, and carried a pail 
in what should have been his free hand. 

"Doctor," said he, ''I've got a misery. They-all say 
vou kin cure me. Kin you cure me, doctor f 

"Well, what's the matter with you r' 

'•I've got a smotherin' feelin', doctor," said the man. 
making u\) a face expressive of great distress. "'Pears 
like water washing 'round in my stnmmick." Here he 
niade a rotary movement covering his whole trunk, from 
his chin to his legs, to show what he appeared to regard 
as his stomach. " Old Charley Jones says you kin knock 



'em out. Kin you do it, doc ? They're smotherin' spells. 
I've been takin' pills. Dun'no' what they are, but they're 
right black ; only they don't go for the misery. Kin you 
cure me, doc T' 

'' Oh, I think so," said the doctor. 

" AVell, if you kin git to go up to my place and bring 
some better pills, I'll be right glad, doctor." 

To describe the in-door life of the people we will be- 
gin with their picturesque little cabins. They are nearlv^ 
all log cabins, often of one room, occasionally of two, 
and never of three. Each has a heavy chimney on one 
end, built of the stones jiicked off the ground near by. 
The chimnej'S are all alike — broad at the base to allow 
for the fireplace, and either daubed with mud inside and 
out, or left in the rough on the outside. The fireplace 
is made of slabs of stone, and usually two lai-ge stones 
project into the room to keep the fire from the floorino-. 
The thrifty folk maintain little door-yards, in which a 
few simple old-fashioned flowers grow without order or 
arrangement. Each place, whether it be a mere clear- 
ing or a tidy yard, maintains the man's dogs — a starving, 
snarling, barking breed of mongrel hounds, made up of 
ribs, spine, and an open mouth. Show me the dogs, and 
I can give you the commercial rating of a people. I 
have never yet seen dogs so mean and so numerous as 
those of the Swampy Cree Indians of Canada, therefore 
I know that those people are poorer than even the ne- 
gro farmers along the Mississippi. 

l)Ut let us step into a few West Virginia cal)ins. The 
(k)or is the principal source of dayliglit, Ixit some have 
daylight streaming in through many uncared-for cracks 
or chinks between the log walls. The draughts are such 
that one would think the bedck)tiies had to be nailed 
down to keep them on the beds in such cabins. Some 
cabins have regular windows, and others revel in a few 

32*0 



panes of glass let into one wall. The lofts over the 
main room of each cabin are reached in different ways, 
bnt I did not see one that had a pair of stairs. There 
is not room for stairs, or talent enough to build a pair. 
Sometimes a ladder outside the house serves the pur- 
]iose, and often as I reined up before a cottage I saw 
the women and girls — all as shy as deer — scamper out 
and up the ladder. If their curiosity was strong they 
came down again l)v-andd)y, in their best but very cheap 
gowns, and it was delightful to see in them the same 
femininity that is observable on Madison Avenue, dis- 
|)layed in the way they smoothed down their dresses, 
disciplined their hair with their fingers, and tiptoed to 
glance into a cracked bit of nnrror over one another's 
shoulders. 

The rule is to reach the loft bv a ladder inside, at the 
foot of the bed, but there are cabins so primitive that 
when the woman takes you up to show you her loom 
she calls to her eldest girl child, '• Nance, git the pegs 
and set "em in fer we-all to go up." Then the girl finds 
a number of rough-whittled wooden pins twice the size 
of clothes-pins, and fits them into the line of holes in 
the logs under the loft-hole. Such cabins are seldom 
found except in the true wilderness parts of AVest 
Virginia, the |)ai'ts farthest from the raili'oads. In 
those ]iarts we see truly preserved the mode of life of 
the picturescpie pioneer of IT'A), whom the historian de- 
sci'ibes as stalking into West Virginia with his gun, his 
axe, and his bride. In such cabins one finds beds made 
in the hollow trunks of trees, which have pegs set in 
the corners for legs to raise them up. It is said that 
the under-bedding is often nothing more than a mass 
of autumn leaves. The women in these most primitive 
homes make the corn-pone bread in dug-out troughs 
skilfullv bitten out of a cucumber or po})lar log with 

830 



the husl);uurs axe, and I have been told that travellers 
have frequently seen the youn<4'est baby seated in one 
end of such a- trough while the mother kneaded the 
douiih in the other end. 

To return to the a\'erage typical house, the routine of 
life is pursued in the one room. In one corner is the 
dining-tal)le, in jinother is the closet or l)ureau, and in 
the others ai'e the beds. The dreadful absence of 
privacy, or, to put it better, the incessant pnblicity, 
which shocks us so when we read of tenement- house 




A NATIVK SI'OKTSMAX 



life in New York, ol)tains in all the mountaineer homes, 
where land is abundant to a greater degree than it is 
scarce and hard to acquire in the metropolis. In these 
cottages other phases of life are as peculiar. A pail, a 
wash-bowl, and a dipper set out-of-doors serve for the re- 
quirements of the toilet. I am told that the people never 
wash their bodies, and I judge that the men rarely comb 
their hair. The women "slick" theirs over with water 
and a comb. The children sinq:»ly "grow up" in a long 
juvenile fight against heavy odds of dirt and tangles. 

Over the yawning fireplace in each cabin one sees 
the beginning of the high colonial mantel -which we so 
eagerly borrow for our houses — a tall narrow shelf 
bearino- a line of bottles and cans. There or on a closet 
or bureau one is certain to see a cheap Connecticut 
clock, and under the tall old-fashioned principal bed is 
apt to be seen the most important article in a mountain 
household — the cradle. Never thought of till the last 
minute, and there being no money to buy a thing that 
can be made at home, the cradle is usually a heavy pine 
box on a pair of eccentric rockers, so that it is apt to 
rock as a snake travels — one end at a time. In very 
tidy cabins the walls are covered with newspaper to 
keep out the draught; the wife has a little cupboard 
for her cups and dishes, her pepper, sugar, and salt, and 
a bureau for her clothing. Several times I saw some 
fresh flowers in a broken cup on the bureau, and a few 
noisy -looking chromos, usually presenting scenes of 
courtship, or pictures of women in goi'geous attire, 
stuck about on the walls. A lamp is a rare thing in a 
mountain cabin. Living there is simpler than the rule 
of three. When daylight fails, the people go to bed. 
If they sit up, they do so in the light of the logs in the 
fireplace. If they need to find anything which that 
light does not disclose, they pick out a blazing pine knot 

332 



from the fire and carry it about as we would carry a 
lantern or a lamp. The pine knots smolve so prodig- 
iously that the ceilings of these cabins are as black as 
ebony : not a bad effect from an artistic point of view, 
for the dead black is soft and rich, and shows off every- 
thing against and beneath it, particularly the brass- 
trimmed gun that is certain to hang on a rafter just in 
front of the door. 

The mountain folk are often " squatters " on the land. 
A man plants two or three acres — rarely as much as 
ten acres — in corn, and if he has two apple-trees that 
bear fruit he is very lucky. lie has the corn ground 
into meal by parang a tithe of it to the miller, and takes 
it home sitting on it on his horse. His wife makes it 
into big rocklike "dodgers" or pone-cakes with salt and 
water and " no rising." It gives out towards February, 
as a rule, and then come the annual hard times. Then 
the woman collects " sang" and herbs, and packs up bark 
for those who ship it to the distant tanners. "Sang" 
is a staple source of income in the mountains. It is so 
called as a nickname for ginseng, a root that is becom- 
ing more and more rare, and fetches $2 50 a pound now, 
whereas it used to fetch only fifty cents. It looks a 
little like ginger, and the authorities disagree as to 
whether it is the real ginseng of China, or, indeed, 
whether it is at all related to it. If it is not, it is used 
in China as a cheap substitute for that mysterious, most 
expensive drug, which the Chinese believe to be able to 
prolong life, and even to restore virility to the aged. 

These should be the most ruggedly healthy of all 
us Americans. Their mountain air, sweetened by the 
breath of the pine forests, is only excelled in purity by 
the water they drink. They live simply and without 
haste or worry, as we know it would be better for us 
all to do. They are not an immoral or dissipated peo- 

833 



])le. And vet they never know a day of health or 
bodily content. Dyspepsia is a raging lion among 
them all. This is hecanse <»f the bad, the monstrously 
bad, cooking their food gets. That demon combination 
of the darkey and the frying-pan which rules the entire 
South produces a mild and delectable form of cookery 
comjnired to the kind that gnaws the vitals of the AVest- 
A'irginians. Smoking-hot, half-cooked corn-dodger is 
their main reliance, and it is always helped down with 
a great deal of still hotter and very Ijad coffee. Those 
who ii'et meat at all get salt meat. 

Let ns drop in u})on a mountaineer's home — one of 
the tidy sort, where they have apple- trees, and the 
woman has made a few pots of dark and lumpy apple- 
bntter. The logs are blazing on the simple black and- 
irons, and the kettle is sjnittering as it swings on the 
]iot-hook over the flames. As a preliminary to the meal 
the man takes down the bottle of '' bitters'' fi'om the 
mantel-])iece and helps himself to a. goodly di'aught. 
lie makes the bitters himself of new proof moonshine 
whiskey, tinctured ^vith cucumber fruit, burdock oi* 
sarsajiarilla root. 

"J wuz d(jwn to the Springs," says the man, '"an' I 
heard one o' them loud-talkin' city women fussin' a 
ii'reat deal 'bout the evils of drink. I wouldn't 'a' minded 
her ef she'd a-leaved me 'lone, but she kep' talkin' at me. 
After a bit I just let her have what was bilin' in me. 
' I allers 'low,' says I, ' that whiskey is a good thing. A 
little wdiiskey and sarsaparil' (jf a mornin' fer me and 
the ole woman.' says T, 'an' a little whiskey an' l)urdock 
every mornin' fer the chillcn — why, it's a pervision of 
natur' fer turnin' chillen inter men an' women, and then 
keepin' 'em men an' w^omen after you've turned 'em that 
way.' Gosh! she didn't like me — -that woman didn't." 

The wife, as a first step, takes a tin can and goes out 

3U 







A MOINTAIMOKI! S (AIUN 



to milk' the cow. A toiiiato-cini sci'ves for the milking' 
of the average iiiountain cow, and the women hohl the 
can with one hand and milk with the otJKM'. The ap- 
pearance of tlie cow and the size of the can snggest the 
idea that it miglit h;' hettei' to milk the wild deer, if one 
could catch them, ^lilking ovei", the woman comes in 
to cook the meal. Any one can tell what meal she is 
prepai-ing b}^ the time of day; there is no oth(;r way. 
as all three meals of tln^ day ai'e precisely alike. She 
pnts a handful of cotfee-heans into a skillet, and holds 
them (jver the lire until they are coaled on the outside 
like charcoal. She em])ties the skillet into a coffee- 
grinder on the wall, and holds the cofl'ee })ot under the 



grinder while she grinds the beans. She puts some corn 
meal into a box-trough or a dug-out trough, throws in a 
little water and salt, and works the dough with her fin- 
gers until it feels of the right consistency, when she takes 
it out in handfuls patted into cakes that are ornamented 
with her finger-marks. These she puts into a little iron 
oven shoved up close to the fire. She pours cold water 
into the coffee-pot, and presses that into the embers and 
close to the burning logs. Then she slices some bacon, 
and puts it into a long-handled frying-pan, where it is 
soon burned without being cooked. As soon as the cof- 
fee boils the work is done, and she says, " Your bite is 
read}^ ; sit by." Earthen-ware plates, steel knives, two- 
pronged forks, cups and saucers, and a dish of apple-but- 
ter are already on the table, with the milk-can, and an- 
other can which holds the sugar. A storekeeper in that 
region once tried to introduce forks with three prongs, 
but the people were not ready for such a revolution, 
" We want a fork that '11 straddle a bone," they said. 

I wish there was room for descriptions of their 
dances, their old-fashioned shooting -matches and log- 
rollings, and of tliat queerest of all sports, the gander- 
pull, the fun of which consists in hanging a gander by 
the legs or in a bag from a tree limb or a gallows, and 
then greasing his neck, and offering him as a prize to 
w^ioever can grip his head and pull it off while riding 
beneath him at full speed. The old houses of the " qual- 
ity folk " and their formal lives and Avarm hospitality 
shine like gems in this rough setting. The stealthy 
activity of the " moonshiners," who have the moral as 
well as the financial support of the people, would form 
a good part of still another chapter. But these subjects 
are not so new as the broader view of the simple habits 
and surroundings of these backward people who live as 
(Hd the founders of our republic. 

336 



IX 
OUR NATIONAL CAPITAL 

Washington is already the most beautiful city in our 
country. Planned by man, instead of being the out- 
growth of circumstance, it greets the beholder as a 
work of art — a gem among cities, a place of parks and 
palaces. It has all the dignity that power and place re- 
flect, and all the beauty that should go with the social 
rulership it is developing. 

It is the capital of authority and pleasure. The confi- 
dence of the one and the restfulness of the other are in 
its soft and mainly languorous atmosphere. Take the 
Congressional Limited train from New York of a morn- 
ing, so as to laud on Pennsylvania Avenue in the after- 
noon. There are no crowds. Only on the -Ith of March, 
when 200,000 sight-seers line one street, can there be 
crow^ds in those magnificent boulevards. But the avenue 
is alive with people. They are different from the people 
of our other cities. They are American. That is to say, 
they are persons from all the States and Territories, who 
are well enough established in citizenship to be of the 
government, of fashionable society, or of a population 
which has not manufactures or commerce to attract for- 
eigners or new citizens. 

The people on the avenue are well-dressed, self^ 
respecting, a little proud, and confident. As much fi'ee- 
dom and equality as you will find refiected in the 
manners of any multitude on earth are visible in that 
Y 337 



assembly. They walk as no other cityful walks in this 
country — always with a parade step. There is no bolt- 
ing alono; as in New York, or slonchinfi" alon^ as in the 
South. Tliere are no strained faces of men who pluuge 
ahead muttering to themselves as in Chicago. The pa- 
raders of Washington all wear their best clothes, and 
move in stately measure — right foot, 1, 2, o ; left foot, 
1, 2, 3 ; right foot — from the Capitol to the Treasury, 
and back again, keeping to the right as the law" directs. 

Nobody works hard there except the ]n'esent Presi- 
dent. More tlian TO,(tO0 persons live on assured incomes 
from the government, with ease of mind, and little need 
to lay a penny b^^ In turn 75,000 negroes live upon 
them, with greater ease of mind, and a constitutional 
objection to guar*ling against a rainy day. That ac- 
counts for close to 150,000 out of the less than 230,000 
souls in the ])lacid city. The rest are keeping stores, 
keeping great and nearly always white hotels, kee]iing 
boarding-houses, keeping saloons and livery - stables. 
Many are maintaining great mansions for the giving of 
balls and routs and I'l.^ceptions. Then there are the 
white sei'vants and clerks and assistants of all these. 
And somewhere in the swarm (but I never saw a sign 
of them in all my intimacy with Washington) are the 
folks who have made Washington a manufacturing city. 

The lion. Henry Cabot Lodge has said that " it is a 
government city and nothing else. It has practically no 
manufactures and no commerce, and its population is 
made up of persons engaged in the government service 
and of those who supjily their wants, together with a 
constantly increasing class of peo|)le who come to dwell 
there because it is a pleasant place to live."' And Mrs. 
Frances Hodgson l>urnett,who also has lived there, finds 
the city unlike all others in the main, and particularly 
because it has no manufactories. That is the Wciy it has 

338 




EASY-GOINCi NEGROES IN THE MAHKKT-SrACE 



struck me, and yet Special Bulletin 15S of the last cen- 
sus declares it to be the eighteenth city in the value of 
its manufactures. As the fact jars upon the very spirit 
of the AVashington its admirers know, the reader and I 
may be pardoned for pausing to examine this disturbing 
document. The parade on Pennsylvania Avenue will 
not mind halting. It would do as much for a half-dozen 
singing negroes with Salvation Arni}^ ribbons on their 
hats. It has all the time in the world, and would rather 
halt than not. 

Lo ! the twenty- five principal su1)jects of labor are 
bottling, brick and tile making, carpentering, carriages 
and wagons, candy, engraving, flour and grist milling, 
architectural and ornamental iron - working, furniture, 
liquors, lithographing, sash, door, and blind making, 
marble and stone work and masonry, painting and pa- 
per-hanging, plastering, paving, pluml)ing and gas -fit- 
ting, printing and publishing, saddlery and harness, tin- 
ware, tobacco, watch and clock and jewelry repairing. 
In other words, the city is building up very fast, and 
the work is mainly in support of that extension and in 
the maintenance of life and comfort there. 

Pennsylvania Avenue's paraders pass the finest shops 
that any city of the size in the country can muster. 
They are not all so large as they are elegant. They re- 
flect the prosperity and polish of the population. The 
windows form a beautiful exposition, one that interests 
and pleases the visitors from the biggest cities. The dis- 
play is led by the jewellers, picture, art, and bric-a-brac 
dealers, photographers, furnishers, and fancy-goods deal- 
ers. A great book- store, such as few of our cities can 
show, is the rendezvous of the scholarly and literary folk, 
who love Washington best of all, I think. 

It is interesting to watch the people in the parade be- 
fore the windows. In the quieter residence avenues of 

340 



the northwestern section one may see the rich to better 
advantage, in far separated couples or in carriages, and 
one may see the mansions and gardens, and the nurses, 
and those toddlers who are the luckiest children in the 
Union ; for of all jilaces Washington is the most heaven- 
like for children. But in the mixed throng on Pennsyl- 
vania Avenue there is a chance to see the peo])le of a 
city so distinctively Amei'ican as to contain only 18,000 
foreign-born men and women. The Southerners attract 
the eye first. Their soft hats and Prince Albert coats 
betray them. The lawyer, the leader in the South, has 
set the fashion for all his people. So it comes that all 
Southern men dress like lawyers — in sober black with 
long coat-tails. In their carriage one sees a strange 
confiict of pride and slovenliness^ — pride in the pose of 
the head, and indolence in their gait. Their women, 
petted to the spoiling-point when they are young, are 
the life of the avenue, and of all Washington. To be 
typical they must be blondes, and we see hundreds of 
pure blondes in the parade. And they must be merry 
and much in evidence, having never been restrained. 
They are absolutely queens at home, and hesitate at 
nothing. Literature, art, wit, vocalization, dramatic enter- 
tainment, reform, equestrianism, leadership of fashion, 
social activity — there is nothing into which they do not 
plunge ; and they and their peculiarities are all intensi- 
fied m Washington. Their husbands and brothers look 
on in blind idolatry. For themselves the Southern men 
ask only to be considered orators ; and that they all are. 
What should we do but for tlie Southerners in Washino-- 
ton — but for their spirited and pretty women especiallv ? 
But there is no need to discuss doing without this leaven 
in the great lump. x\nd it is fitting that they should be 
most conspicuous there, for Washington is a Southern 
city geographically. True, George AVashington and his 

841 



testy engineer, L'Enfant, planned to have it grow to tlie 
eastward of tlie Capitol, on the high plateau that was 
best suited for a city's site. And they intended the 
White House to be a semi-country-seat, apart from the 
town. The Southerners were in control then, and where 
they thought the cit}^ would come they laid out avenues 
for their beloved States — Virginia and Georgia and 
North and South Carolina avenues. Alas for their 
Ijopes ! the greedy land -owners and speculators held 
that land too high, and we built the city so that to-day 
the elegant streets are the ones that bear the names of 
the down-East Yankee States. 

Next in order of notability in the parade are the 
Western, folk — great in numbers, as befits the represen- 
tatives of nearly two-thirds of the Union. There is no 
mistaking them, either. Their men are bearded, hot- 
eyed, intense beings, self - concentrated, as 3'ou can see 
in their every action and movement and conversation. 
Their women include many of the leaders of the official 
and the social sets, and yet, taking them by and large, 
as the sailor phrase goes, the Western women are the 
ones that come oftenest raw and ill at ease in the for- 
mal, ultra-conventional routine of the public and social 
life, -where power and place are graded in one set, and 
etiquette and eating rule the other. The darkies are 
very conspicuous by reason of their peculiarities and 
their numbers. They divide themselves into two bodies. 
The elegant and ambitious form one, and the lazy, hap- 
py, easy-going work-folk and vagrants form the other. 
But the darky mob is most ])icturesque, with its red- 
waisted nurse-girls, its huge bandanna-ci'owned " mam- 
mies," its Avhite-bearded, rheumatic old "uncles" in the 
-whitewashing line, its ragtag and bobtail loafers, out at 
elbow, toggle-jointed, loose all over, and content when- 
ever the sun shines on them. 

342 




ilOUir 




THE STEPS OF THE CAPITOL 



That wliicli we liave called the parade is no parade at 
all. It is so spoken of because of the slow-measured pace 
and holiday air of the peo])le on the main avenue, but it 
is the whole body of the population we have been de- 
scribing, and not any fraction of tiiem, except as we 
have particularized. There is no promenade in Wash- 
ington, though there is a big Fifth Avenue following 
that wishes for one. These fashionables and official 
leaders have been for a long time endeavoring to estab- 
lish a carriage parade like Rotten Row, for they have 
not even that. Back of the White House, where used 
to be '* the Flats," is a vast meadow set with clumps of 
trees* here and there, and cut by a great circular drive. 
It is called the White Lot, and lies between the ]\[onu- 
ment on the east and the Van Ness mansion on the west. 
Another ring of road encircles the adjoining Monument 
lot. Mrs. Harrison and Mrs. Morton lent the highest 
sanction to the plan for holding a ca^rriage meet there 
once a week,- but it did not succeed. Again, as I write 
this, at Easter-time in 1894:, the diversion has been re- 
vived, and with more success, since the assemblies have 
shown barons and counts and generals and millionair- 
esses rolling in an endless circle, and bowing and loung- 
ing back upon upholstered seats quite in the way that 
has been wished for. The use of these two rather naked 
lots makes the plan somewhat too arbitrary, though it 
may succeed. But when the greatest of Washington 
improvements is accomplished we shall see a grand field 
for such a weekly meet — one tliat will resound with the 
heavy rumble of elegant landaus and drags on every fine 
day in the season. I refer to that time when the entire 
south side of Pennsylvania Avenue, from the Capitol to 
the Monument, shall be made a park. On that side of 
the avenue (excepting the buildings on the avenue itself) 
there is now a series of narrow ])arks all the way. It is 

344 



broken only b}^ the Pennsylvania Railway crossing-; bnt 
between that greenery and the avenue the bnildings 
form what is called '" the Division " — the disreputable 
quarter of the city. It is an eyesore physically as well 
as niorallv. Legislation looking towards the razing of 
these buildings and the establishment of a noble park 
where they stand has been sought for in more than one 
bill that has failed of passage. But it is to be done as 
surely as anything mundane can be promised. 

The park area of Washington is only 538 acres, but at 
every circle where tlie avenues cross one another is a lit- 
tle park. Every view along the avenues ends at a cloud 
of foliage, with an equestrian statue in the heart of it. 
Every avenue is doubly fringed with trees, and when 
one looks down on the city from an eminence the whole 
place— excepting the wide canal cut by Pennsylvania 
Avenue — is hid under foliage. A dome or two, the 
Monument, and a few steeples rise above the leaves, as 
if to suggest the presence of a city that has been aban- 
doned and swallowed up by a forest. The planting of 
trees has been an olRcial mania, and the faster they have 
multiplied the faster the malaria, that once ruled the 
place, has dwindled out of consideration. 

The basis of the unique plan of the city is a mathe- 
matical, checker-board arrangement of squares made by 
streets running north and south and streets running east 
and Avest. One set is numbered, and the other set is 
known by letters, so that a child can easily master the 
system. But L'Enfant planned the city when the hor- 
rors of the French Pevolution were fresh in mind, and 
in order that it should never be barricaded, and that 
troops could be swiftl}" moved to any point of it, he de- 
vised a double system of wheel spokt>s laid across the 
whole city — one set of spokes having the Capitol for its 
hub, and the other set meeting at the White House. 



The spokes that cut up the sub-system so })ecaliaiiy ai-e 
the great avenues that l)eai' the names of the States. 
The streets are from 8() to 120 feet wide, and the ave- 
nues are from 120 to KiO feet wide. Not only are many 
of the streets all but roofed over by trees, and not alone 
are there the numerous tree-filled squares of which J 
have s])oken, but where the avenues cross the streets 
and cut off corners and leave little \vedges of land cut 
off from the blocks, there also are flower-beds and shady 
little park bits. There are 235 miles of thoroughfares 
in the city, and of these 1(]3 miles are paved, 00 luiles 
being asphalt. Tlie city is kept beautifullv clean, and 
the loudest imitation of a city's roar that is heard in the 
bowery, begardened residential districts is the melodi- 
ous click-a-tick made by the hoofs of the horses — a con- 
stant chorus peculiar to Washington. 

There are manv delightful country drives in the sub- 
urbs of Washington, and nearly all the suburbs are very 
beautiful. The city is in a basin, in the bottom of a 
pass, with a rim of hills all around it. The Virginia 
hills are on one side, and those of Maryland are on the 
other. The prime drive is along Rock Creek. For two 
or three miles along it the government has laid out a 
zoological park, which one great traveller characterizes 
as the most beautiful natural park in the world. On 
the hottest days this charming drive is shaded during 
the afternoons. It has acontinuation called the Pierce's 
Mill Road, which starts from a picturesque old mill and 
leads to the Tenallytown (pronounced " Tenlytown """j 
Road near Red Top, the President's first suburban 
home. Another drive in this in'etty region leads behind 
Grasslands and ends in Georgetown, now a pai't of 
Washington, and one of the most sul)stantial and inter- 
esting of our Southern cities. In the opposite end of 
town — in South Washington — is the St. Elizabeth Drive, 

346 



si '''■ill 




rtAV^H; 



IN THE KOTUNDA OF THE CAPITOL 



which otters at least one view as fine as any in the rich 
gallery of Washington's natural scenes. The Bladens- 
burg: Road, and the drive to Arlinoton and on to Alex- 
andi'ia, are excellent, and there are many others almost 
as fine. The drive to Cabin John Bridge is perhaps the 
most famous, though no longer fasliionable; the most 
popular is the one to and in the grounds of the Soldiers' 
Home. There are twenty miles of carriage roads with- 
in these superb grounds, and adjoining them is the new 
Roman Catholic university, which occupies one of the 
finest sites that can well be imagined for the effective 
display of noble buildings and for the enjoyment of a 
beautiful outlook. 

There is not space to describe the grand houses of 
what is already called " old" Washington, or the palaces 
of those who seek to make the city a social capital. 
Perhaps it would be fairer to say, " the men and women 
who are seeking Washington and its society because it 
is the social capital." New Washington must be seen 
to be appreciated. Its houses are of as many designs 
as their ow^ners have minds and tastes. They stand free 
and clear amid gardens. They are big and tall and 
roomy. Some are grand and inany are pretty, and all 
are comfortable. 

" Society in Washington,"' said one of the men who 
lead it, '' is the only cosmopolitan society in America. 
That in New York is ver}^ narrow and provincial, con- 
trolled by a limited set of people of one origin. Here 
in Washington it is made up of high-bred people from 
all over Cliristendom, and it entertains all the people of 
distinction who come to this countrv, as well as all who 
are of the country and come to Washington." 

" It is not pretentious," he said at another time. " In 
spite of the men of mere wealth who have come into it, 
one may entertain here with tea and ices at times when 

34S 



an elaborate dinner costing thousands would be the 
thing in Xew York." 

The different social sets and their values and relations 
are as hard for a stranger to understand as the horns 
that are treated of in llevelation. The problem may be 
simplified by dividing society into two sets — the official 
and the fashionable. The official society appeals tre- 
mendously to persons from small towns. The wife who 
comes to Washington with tiie member from Podunk, 
or with the Senator's private secretary from Lonely 
City, gets her first shock when, at the hotel where she 
is stopping, she attends a reception by a woman from 
her own section, and sees other women in low-necked 
dresses for the first time. She has always associated 
decollete and disre})ute together. Sometimes she with- 
draws into her little shell, and has a dreary stay in 
AVashington with a few chosen spirits of like narrow- 
ness. Sometimes she broadens and meets the conditions 
around her. In numberless instances the husband 
broadens and leaves the wife at home ; in many the 
wife takes up society and the husband takes to his 
shell. 

The beginnings of official experience are peculiar. 
First tlie new-comers meet the persons from their local- 
ity. Then they make the acquaintance of the wives of 
Congressmen — other Congressmen if they are Congres- 
sional. They attend a reception at the National Hotel, 
perhaps, and meet the other Congressional new-comers, 
many clerks and their wives, Mrs. and Mrs. Third As- 
sistant Comptroller So-and-so, Fish-Commissioner Thus, 
and Superintendent This. Then is the time the unso- 
phisticated man and woman first see the dmdleU dresses 
and have their future determined. They will have 
established themselves in a hotel, and will breakfast, 
sup, and dine at a table set apart for the men and 

349 



women of the Congress delegation of the State from 
which they hail. There the}^ will anchor if they are of 
the kind that sing " provincial I was born and ]:)rovin- 
cial I will die/' But very many develop and widen, 
and quickly choose their own friends and resorts from 
among all the people and houses of Washington. They 
are aided to choose from a larger or a lesser field by 
their own merits, their personalities and brains, and 
ability to take part and place, high or low, as the case 
may be. 

The Congressional people and their alphabetical 
friends at the hotel table, where all meet at lirst — I 
call them alphabetical because they are designated by 
counties and districts of one State — these people meet 
fragments of all circles at the President's receptions 
and the receptions of members of the cabinet, and 'at 
the houses of great politicians who have gone heavily 
into society. They go with crude ideas and crude sen- 
sations at first. They especially like to meet the mem- 
bers of the diplomatic corps. They are curious about 
the diplomats, and enjoy seeing them, as the people of 
the courts of Europe like to see the Shah and his ret- 
inue. Barons and Seilors, Dons and Counts, are novel- 
ties to them. They have all read about them in novels, 
and they consider them romantic. They like to write 
home that their wives and daughters have danced with 
these novelties. But at the same time— and in the course 
of business in Congress — they are getting their chances 
for entree into whatever circles they admire and are 
fitted for. 

Curiously enough, there is another body of persons 
that seek the diplomatic corps, and not for novelty, but 
to feel flattered by being known to its members. These 
are purely society people, and are mainly from the 
North and East. They always come with an exagger- 

350 



ated estimate of the diplomatic corps, and with a de- 
termination to court its members. The truth is that 
there are nice diplomats, as there are nice missionaries 
or nice Congressmen, but many who do not know the 
facts will be astonished to hear that we send a better 
grade of men abroad than the foreign rulers send to ns. 
Often our ministers stand head and shoulders above 
theirs when measured from the standpoints of manhood, 
ability, presentableness, and sometimes family distinc- 
tion. The men who come to us may excel in polish, 
but often that is nearly all they have to recommend 
them. An exception must be made in the case of the 
British ministers, who, since the Sack ville -West episode, 
have been and will be men of ability. The actual fact in 
Washington is that the senatorial circle views the diplo- 
matic circle from a slight eminence, good-humoredly, 
with indifference. And the senatorial circle is not by 
itself a high circle outside of official societ}^ That is 
where the author of a recent novel that has had great 
vogue shows a lack of knowledge of the real springs of 
Washington life as seen from the inside. He makes 
diplomatic recognition the "open sesame" to the best 
society. The truth is that there may be, once in a while, 
a society woman from another city who aspires to enter 
Washington society from abroad rather than by the 
home doorwa}^ but such a person is apt to have doubts 
about her own social position. 

The set that counts in AVashington — the cream — is 
made up of the few who combine high official position 
with high social standing. They are so broad as to 
have established the only elegant society in this country 
to which a man of brains, without wealth, can rise. I 
am in doubt wdiether mere wealth gives entree to it ; in 
doubt because good authorities deny that it is so, while 
others point to men and women within the circle who 

352 




THE WHITE HOrSE ENTHANCE 



seem to them to have nothinij' l)iit iniUi(jns. Apart 
from wealth, it is certain tliat no ])ublic ])o.sition carries 
the key with it. A cabinet position doos not. It ha])- 
])ens that there ai'e and have been cabinet nieml)ei"S who 
attend only purely official and formal receptions and 
levees. Some cabinet men have asked no moi'c than to 
" keep solid " witli the delegations from their own States. 
In the round of a winter's festivities in tliis leading- 
z 353 



social circle you see Jiow cosmopolitan it is ; you get 
bits of experience such as the cream of London society 
offers, and tliat of New York never does. You pay 
homage to explorers, army and navy heroes, historians, 
artists, scientists, and the lights tliat illumine the whole 
world of genius. In this societ}' are people of Murray 
Hill and Beacon Street who never could force the 
geniuses of politics and statecraft and art and letters on 
their little circles at home, and yet they do so in Wash- 
ington, and therefore enjoy the capital best. 

This set has outgrown the stage at which it may 
have felt that a titled foreigner conferred distinction 
upon it. If James Bryce and the Duke of Westminster 
came simultaneously to Washington, the Duke would 
receive tlie attention his letters called for, but the his- 
torian would be sought and honored for his worth. 
Such, at least, is what the best-known men in that circle 
assure me. Any person of note who comes to America 
must bring letters to some one in this circle in order 
to enter it — another distinct stride in advance of some 
circles elsewhere that boast of exelusiveness. 

This best Washington circle makes much of certain 
public men who are not in a position to entertain. 
There is a quid pro quo that it asks of all who enjoy 
its houses and dinners and assemblies, and that is that 
they must be entertainiug; they must contribute their 
share towards the general enjoyment wherever they go. 
I am assured that the standard of morality is what one 
would expect in a circle made up of men and women 
from all parts of our young country. The case of a 
talented foreigner who brought a mistress to Washing- 
ton with him is still remembered. As he lived in Wash- 
ington he could have lived in almost any Old World 
capital, but in Washington he was invited nowhere. He 
had to go home to be happy. 

354 




IN THE TOP OF THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT 



Despite what I have written of exclusive society, 
democracy is more evident at the seat of our govern- 
ment than anywhere else in America. Washington is 
a great leveller. Had the capital been set up m Kew 
York, or any great commercial or manufacturing city, 
the result would surely have been very different. The 
people or the officials would have drawn a line between 
the two classes. But as it is, Washington is nothing 
else than official, and the men who hold place become 
ordinary by mere force of numbers. Heart pangs 
come to new Congressmen, who find themselves count- 
ing for no more than ordinary citizens outside their 
council -chamber. Indeed, only the members of the 
Upper House have been able, by reason of their few- 
ness and long tenure of office, to create an artificial dig- 
nity for themselves wholly within one wins: of the 
Capitol. In the hotel lobbies and in the streets no one 

3o5 



points out a Senator as a Senator, tliouo'h especial gifts 
and strong personality, or great wealth or eccentricity, 
may cause a few to be whispered about as they pass in 
tlie crowds. 

And how can this help but be the case where even 
the President walks about the streets on fine afternoons, 
is met in the shops, goes on foot to and from church, 
and I'ides about the country roads in a carriage not dif- 
ferent from those of his genteel neiglibors ? President 
Arthur's fine tigure was a common feature of ont-of- 
(U)or life in Washington. General (larfield had been 
long known, by sight, to all Washington before he was 
President. Neither Grant nor Hayes nor Harrison 
ever secluded himself; and if President Clev^eland does 
so it is because he is a poor pedestrian and an ill- 
advised worker, attending to even tlie routine (hities 
which other Presidents have shouhlered upon subordi- 
nates. The custom of tri-weekly rece])tions to the pub- 
lic which Mr. Cleveland made a feature of Washington 
life during his hrst term, which Benjamin Harrison 
kept up, and which many Presidents have observed, 
had great levelling effect. The Member from Podunk 
could not give himself airs if his humblest constituent 
had shaken hands with the Executive that day, and 
meant to do so a£!:ain dav after to-morrow. The custom 
must have made many a foreigner marvel. It was 
ultra-American — the best thing for the people, and the 
most disagreeable for their chief servant of any j^hase 
of the relationship of the office-holder to tlie masses in 
our government. The man whose personality made him 
seem to fill the place more fully and majestically — to 
the eye, at any rate — than any man since Washington, 
used to hold such receptions wherever he went, and any 
man could shake his hand. I have seen him receive 
the people of a pastoral region in the parlor of a 

806 



country, hotel, and i^ut new pride into the Americanisni 
of thousands. 

It must be a singular strain upon a. man to l)e Presi- 
dent. Three of our Presidents have told me that the 
pains and penalties of that greatness were all Init be- 
yond endurance, and that they looked forward with 
grand impatience to a. release from the cares of govern- 
ment. " I am hunted like ;i jack-rabbit," is the way 
one put it. "Everywhere I put up my head the office- 
seekers jump on me." Yet two of these felt a melan- 
choW they could not hide when they left the AVhite 
House, and all three worked hard to be re-elected. 

Washington is the ca|)ita,l of good dining. It is true, 
as one leading entertainer said to me, that there is no 
really first-class restaui'ant there, but the truth of the 
assertion depends upon the star.dard one sets and the 
])oint from which one views the question. Washiugton 
society is the most cosmopolitan in this country, but its 
dishes, like the body of its population, are American. 
It is fitting that this should be so. IN'ot long ago one 
of our Presidents sent for IVfr. John F. CUiamberlin, the 
heartiest celebrator of Americanism in dining in this 
countrv. ''I am in trouble," said he. " I have no cook 
and no wines, but I am to give a dinner to a roN^al per- 
sonage. Will you attend to it for me( Tliere are to 
be thirty-three at table.'' Mr. Chamberlin "saved the 
nation." lie sent to the White House his best cook 
and his best waiters, and they prepared and served a 
dinner in which a few edible Americanisms so delight- 
ed royalty that it sent its plate away for second serv- 
ino-s of more than one course. It was a peculiar diiiucr. 
It began with oysters roasted in their shells. Then 
came celery, for which AVashington is celebrated and 
envied, and canvas-back ducks cut in two with a, cleaver, 
and cooked so that one half was on the lii'e when the; 

357 



other was being eaten. Cakes of hominy came with it, 
of course. A rich and heavy dessert was followed by 
coffee and cheese and biscuit toasted. Champagne was 
served with the oysters, and l)urgundy with the duclc. 

The test of the quality of that dinner would be to 
ask any American now in Paris how he would like to 
sit down to just such another to-night. It is safe to say 
that the White House guests would rather have had 
that dinner than sncli a one as they would be enter- 
tained with to-day — since there is now a French cook, 
at ^150 a month, installed in the kitchen of that grand 
and beautiful old mansion. 

Understanding, then, that the food, the cooks, and 
the methods of cooking are all American, and that oys- 
ters, game-birds, terrapin, and lish are the monarchs of 
all the menus that are fit to discuss, the lover of good 
eating can decide for himself whether the facts are to 
his taste or not. In the mean time I will reproduce 
what a great gourmet told me of the -pieces de resist- 
(ince of the Washington markets. First came the Lynn- 
haven Bay oysters, whose supremacy was never dis- 
puted until fraud entered their field and began to call 
any and every cheaper sort of oyster by that name. 
The real ones still are plenty in Washington, and when 
broiled by a darky cook, or served with curry dressing 
by a white cook, are the most delicious bivalves in the 
world. 

From the near-by waters of the Potomac and Chesa- 
peake Bav come the rock-fish, wliich tastes like bass, but 
is so big as to weigh between six and twenty pounds ; 
the hof-fish, which is a most delicious pan-fish ; the Po- 
tomac perch, so extraordinaril}^ sweet and melting that 
Roscoe Conkling ate one every morning in its season ev- 
ery vear ; the black bass of the Potomac ; and the Chesa- 
peake hard crabs, which C(jme nearly the whole year 

358 




EXCITING SCENE IN THE nOTISE OF KKPRKSKNTATTVES 



uroiiiul, and in AVasliingtoii are eaten deviled after the 
most elaborate preparation. First the meat is scooped 
out until the shell is as clean as a whistle. Then the 
meat is chopped — Ijnt not as line as French cooks chop 
it — and deviled, and put in the sliells and cooked. From 
the same waters and the near-by land come many birds. 
Ill AVashington the men who believe with Carlyle that 
this is "the age of the Ijelly," and is worth enduring on 
that account, all insist that the game-birds from the 
Chesapeake, like the oysters and fish from there, are not 
a|)]iroached in excellence l)y the same creatures caught 
or shot anywhere else in x\merica. The best canvas- 
back ducks, for instance, are the Chesapeake birds, and 
if they are beyond the diner's })urse. he will find that 
the Chesapeake yields mallard, teal, black-head, butter- 
ball, and red-head ducks, which are superior to any of 
their more northerly or southerly congeners. So true 
is this, at least of the famous canvas-backs of the (Chesa- 
peake, that during the past two years ducks have been 
sent up from the North Carolina marshes to dealers on 
the Chesapeake shores to be shipj)ed as Chesapeake 
birds. All the game-ducks are abundant in Washing- 
ton at the very season when their pi-esence is most op- 
portune. 

Quail, woodcock, and partridges from Maryland are 
also cheap and plent}^ there ; and far from last or least 
is the abundant sora, delicious consort of the bog-tish in 
what the Washingtonians love and call their " hog-fish 
and sora dinners." These repasts are a feature in the 
life of those who live to eat. We have said that the 
hog-fish is the greatest delicacy that the frying-pan pro- 
duces. There are very few frying-pan delicacies, and 
most of those are deadly, but not so the hog-fish. It is 
caught in northern Virginia, in the Fortress Monroe 
neighborhood, in autumn, and the sujiply lasts a little 

3t)0 



Joiiirer than the birds abound. For about a month the 
lish and bird flock together — in the markets. The sora- 
birds are a species of rail, a third kirger than the reed- 
l)ird. Tliey come in September, and tliey stay a month 
or two. They are so plentiful in Virginia that men have 
killed them with clubs. 

A Cliesapeake terrapin is worth four times what any 
other terrapin fetches in the market. It is Chesapeake 
terra])in that the Washingtonians think they eat ; but, 
alas ! very few of them, or of us, have tasted terrapin of 
late. Tt is so expensive, so rare, that real diamond-liack 
fetches 8S0 the dozen, and only the rich and the people 
of Baltimore really get it. Chicken, veal, and mud- 
turtle are made to do duty for terra])in now. It is easv 
to deceive the diner with these substitutes, because the 
])rincipal taste of the dish, as it is generally cooked, is 
that of the seasoning of the sauce. True Baltimoreans 
alone are not to be deceived in terrapin, because theN- 
serve the meat in thick slices on top of the sauce, and 
have very little sauce, and none of the sherry in it which 
would serve to hide counterfeit terra]iin in otiier cities. 

The su4)ject of good living recalls the fact that at 
Hancock's, one of the oldest resorts, where old - time 
dishes are prepared by an old-time Virginia cook, the 
Iiahitue.s like to tell of the days when men of great 
renown made it a ]iractice to stop there every dav for a 
cobbler, a julep, or a toddy. That, in turn, suggests 
the good news that drinking is no longer done in public 
by men of natiijnal fame, and heav\' drinking has no 
longer the privilege to mention many honored names 
among its votaries. 

It is astonishing how many persons at Washington 
are in the city and not of it, how many live there and 
enjoy life there without any certainty as to the tenure 
of their stay. Of all the vast body of the government's 

301 



employes only those who come under tlie civil service 
rules regard the city as their permanent abiding-place. 
The rest are "long-termers" or "short-termers" — like 
those who go to prison — if so odious an illustration is 
permissible in explaining so delightful a condition. I 
have no doubt at all that this fact adds to the gayety 
of the place, enhances th^ holiday, pleasure-loving spirit 
of the populace, and is a great factor in the making of 
the delights of the beautiful city. To the rest of thos^ 
who have merely camped there must be added the news- 
paper correspondents — a large and important body. 
The leading correspondents, heads of the bureaus of the 
great newsjiapers, are the flower of the flock of journal- 
ism. The}^ are picked and trusted men. Their work 
is seldom and little editetL They are the guardians of 
the policies of their papers, like the editors themselves. 
Indeed, in the present deluge of news that has folloAved 
the abundance and cheapness of the facilities for dis- 
tributing it, these o-entlemen have become news-brokers 
and editors as well as correspondents. A sw\arm of un- 
placed men and women search the capital for items, 
and bring them to the bureaus. The special correspond- 
ents now command corps of reporters as well, and buy 
and order the news of fashion, dress, society, the courts, 
hotel arrivals, and all the rest. Interviews, descriptive 
articles, and even editorials are now arranged for by 
some of them. The rest follows — that they are talented, 
well known, prosperous, and influential. In Washing- 
ton no bar is set against such inclinations of any of 
them as are reasonable in men of their means and 
duties. (I speak solely of the leaders, the heads of bu- 
reaus.) To such extent as their personalities, methods, 
and journals are respected they have access to the 
better clubs, their wives entertain, and their homes are 
the resorts of diplomats and statesmen. 

362 



Tlieii' contribution to the joyous life of Washington 
takes the form of the Gritiiron Club, now the leading- 
organization of its peculiar kind in this country. A 
]iarty of Washington correspondents were dining at 
Chamberlin's with Judge Crowell on January 11, 1885, 
when it was suc^gested that such a dining -club be 
formed. On January 2-1, 1885, at a meeting at Welck- 
er s, a, constitution and by-laws were submitted for a 
club that was then spoken of as the '' Terrapin Club.'" 
A week later it was formally named tlie Gridiron Club. 
The iirst president was Ben : Perley Poore, and from 
the first dinner it grew steadily in fame and impor- 
tance. 

The club was at Iirst planned upon the lines of the 
well-known Clover Club of Philadelphia, but has since 
developed characteristics of its own. At the Gridiron 
dinners the absurd and indefensible habit of interru}>t- 
ing and "guving" those who speak to the gatherings 
is not made an annoying characteristic. If a speaker 
at a Gridiron dinner is a bore or l)ecomes offensive, he 
receives such sharp interru])tion tliat lie is glad to sit 
down as quickly as he can. Then, again, a rigid rule 
of the Gridiron Club is that nothing shall be spoken 
that sliould not be said in the presence of women. ±s"o 
matter what their importance, or what the '• news qual- 
ity ■' of such addresses may be, it is a rule that wliat is 
said at tliese dinners is always spoken "under the lose." 
So thoroughly is this understood that at the annual din- 
ner of 1892 ex-President Harrison spoke with as much ease 
as he would have talked in his own parlor, and with a 
frankness that rendered his speech an important contri- 
l)ution to the history of the dny. Nearly every member 
of his cabinet sat at the table on that occasion. The 
(4i-i(lii'on Club is one of the most interesting develop- 
ments of the mania for after-dinner oratory which is 

3G4 



epidemic in our country, and which is by no means 
always attended by such admirable, useful, or dignified 
consequences as at the symposiums of this famous 
club. 

Of clubs that are notable, but not peculiar, the ex- 
clusive Metropolitan Club is at the head. The Cosmos 
and the Fniversity clubs are not far behind it. There 
are several others. 

Washington is the Afro- American's earthly jiaradise, 
and there are 75.000 there to enjoy it. It is the oidy 
place in tliis country (except, |)ossibly, in so far as a 
small circle in New Orleans is concerned) where these 
people have a genteel society of their own, and it is the 
place where they have the best standing and treatment. 
To explain the position of the negro. North and South, 
let me tell a true story. In one of the great Southern 
States there is a fine cotton ]ilantation that descended 
to an eccentric white man. He never married, but his 
negro house-keeper bore him two sons. The man was 
fond of them. They were as white to the eye as he 
was. He treated them as any well-to-do and kindly 
father woukl treat his boys. He sent them to a New 
England college, and before and after that they bene- 
fited by his guidance, his learning, and his fine lil)rarv 
and genteel surroundings. In time he died, and left 
them the plantation and manor-house and what money 
lie had. In worldly means they were the equals of any 
planters in that region. In polish and breeding and 
knowledge they were the superiors of very many. 

Their credit at the banks of the nearest city was first- 
class, and they came to be known as scrupulouslj^ hon- 
est. When they went to town the bankers enjo3'ed con- 
versing with them. They often talked of their liard 
lot, their pariaidike existence — of tiie curse that came 
with their coloi-. The best men of the countiy-side 

365 



bowed to them, even conversed with them, in passing 
on the roads, but no white man ever visited their beauti- 
ful, well-api)ointed home. They knew not a single white 
woman even to bow to. One of the brothers, perhaps 
a little finer in mettle than the other, rebelled against 
the unnatural, false, and heartless attitude of his neigh- 
bors, and sold out his interest in the plantation to his 
brother. He went West with his money to one of the 
new cities of the Pacific coast. He invested shrewdly, 
principally in street-car stocks. He made his dollars 
multiply. Perhaps there is a dark line down the spine 
of a man who has African blood in him, as some say ; 
perha])s there is an uncommon whiteness in the eyes of 
such a man, a telltale pinkness of the finger-nails. But 
no one suspected that this handsome capitalist was a 
mulatto. He was tall, with Caucasian features and long 
black hair, and he carried himself proudly. He had his 
desire. He lived on terms of more than equality — great 
popularity, in fact — with the white men and women of 
his city. 

The curse took the shape of Cupid. He fell in love 
w^ith a charming woman, and she told him she returned 
his fond regard. A happy courtship was carried on, 
and at the end he, being honest, told her that African 
blood ran in his veins. She said he had insulted her. 
and she ordered him out of her house. He went, and 
blew his brains out. 

All this has happened in our present day. The broth- 
er on the plantation said a few months ago that he was 
likely at any moment to follow the example of the 
suicide. In all his forty years of life only one white 
man had ever visited him. That was the Episcopal 
bishop of the diocese, who not onlv called upon but 
dined with him — a very brave thing for even a bishop 
to do in the South. He died soon afterwards — last win- 

36U 




PRESS GALLERY IN THE SENATE 



ter — and passed to God's judgment before many white 
men knew of his daring. The lonely brother is a mar- 
ried man. Years ago he went into the Southwest and 
married a woman of tainted blood, as white as himself. 
They have children who are as white as themselves. 
The blacks of the neighborhood hate and revile the en- 
tire family, and will have nothing to do with them. 
There is only one place in tliis country where the}' may 
hold up their heads and move in a society fitted for 
persons of their ])ride and intelligence — that is Wash- 
ington. It would be an Afro-American society which 

367 



tliey would enter, but one modelled closely upon tlie 
lines of white society, and living in amity with that 
body. 

Of the 75,000 negroes in Washington, ?>000 are in 
gov<M'nment employ. Xegroes own eight millions of 
dollars' worth of real estate in the District of C'()hinil)ia. 
Tli(n' have their editors, teachers, professors, doctors, 
dentists, druggists, dancing -masters, their clubs, their 
saloons, their newspapers, churches, schools, and halls. 
AVliites and blacks work together as mechanics and 
laborers, and the typographical union contains black 
printers, just as tlie barbers' union includes white l)ar- 
bers. Alas I the mortality among the blacks is vei-y 
much larger than among the whites, and so is the 
percentage of illegitimacy — but this latter evil is the 
product of the swarm of ignorant "trash" that hive 
around the city and touch the regenerated colored folk 
at no ])oint except as servants and laborers. 

To estimate the apparent progress of the negroes in 
AVasliino'ton, one must iio to their fashionable chui'ches. 
They have scores of churches, but the three leading 
ones are on Fifteenth Street, just back of the IVFonu- 
nuMit. and in a line with it. The nearest to the heart 
of the citv is tlie finest — the Fifteenth Street Presby- 
terian Church — but all three are among the notable 
"sights" of the capital. The Presbyterian church is 
known as the religious rendezvous of the educated set, 
and is necessarily small. The Pev. F. J. Grimke, a negro 
and a Princeton graduate, is the pastor. His Hock is 
com])osed of school-teachers, doctors, lawyers, dentists, 
and those colored folk from all over America wIk) couh^. 
to Washington when they have money to get tlie worth 
of it. You see nothing to laugh at, no darky ]ieculi- 
arities, in that edifice. The peo])le dress, look, and l)e- 
have ]n'ecisely lilce nice white peo])le. only some are 

368 



black, and others are sliaded off from white. You see 
women with lorgnettes, and men with pointed beards 
and button-hole bouquets. Polite ushers move softly to 
and fro, flowers deck the altar at the proper times, a 
melodious choir enchants the ear, and young men dressed 
like the best-dressed men on Fifth Avenue wait on the 
sidewalk for sweethearts or drive up in fine carriages 
for mothers and sisters. 

The next fine church is St. Augustine's lloman Cath- 
olic house of worship, farther down the street. It is a 
large pile of brick and stone. On last Palm-Sunday it 
was crowded. Of all things unexpected, Irish servant- 
girls were there worshipping beside the blacks. A 
portly and fashionable -looking white woman sat just 
Avithin one door, in the vestibule, with an ivory and 
gold prayer-book open on her black satin lap. A white 
priest was assisted l:)y black altar-boys. So great is the 
blockade when the women issue from that church that 
the police come to keep the street clear. 

St. Luke's Episcopal Church, of stone, with a beauti- 
ful stained-glass window behind the chancel, is the last 
of these " sweir' colored churches. A white-haired, 
white-bearded colored man is the rector, and on Palm- 
Sunday he preached to a congregation that included at 
least fifteen white women of the neighborhood, who 
came because it was convenient to do so. In this 
church ten days earlier the servant of a cultivated for- 
eigner living in Washington was married to an Afro- 
American belle. The foreigner and many friends of his, 
whites of both sexes, and ])ersons moving in high society^ 
attended the wedding. They say they had expected to 
see something peculiar, but everything was ordered as 
at a white folks' wedding, and at the end the men 
handed their dark-toned Avomen into the cai-riages and 
l^anged the doors and rode ;iway quite as if th(\v were 
2a 365) 



accustomed to elaborate weddings and the comforts of 
the rich. 

As you ride the length of Fifteenth Street you see 
the small houses and even the shanties of negroes close 
to the great mansions of the wealthy white people. 
The Hon. Levi P. Morton's great house is not more than 
a block from many negro tenements. I am told that 
the case is the same all over the edges of the newer and 
better parts of Washington. In that fact you see one 
reason for the wealth of so many families of colored per- 
sons. " Before 1870," says one historian, writing of the 
now elegant and populous northwestern section of the 
town, " it was dreary and unhealthy, abounding in 
swamps, and mainly occupied by the tumble - down 
shanties of negro squatters. But the Board of Public 
Works, under the leadership of Governor Shepherd, 
began an extensive system of public improvement; the 
swamps were drained, streets were laid out, and now 
the quarter is noted for the beauty of its highways and 
the elegance of its buildings." For the making of this 
beauty and elegance the property-holders were assessed. 
Many negroes surrendered their lots, but many others 
paid the assessments, held on, and were made wealthy 
when fashion led the rich to buy up the land and build 
upon it. Thus the provident colored folk who had 
worked and saved were able to become capitalists. 
Some other fortunes were made in trade, and by cooks, 
restaurateurs, and men who practise the professions 
among the people of their own race. One popular pro- 
fessional man of the ebon race is said to be son of a 
man who mixed cocktails for forty years in a saloon on 
Pennsylvania Avenue — but, hoity, toity ! why should 
our white brothers in high fashionable circles look down 
on the man for that ? 

I have spoken of the" musical click-a-tick of the horses" 

370 



lioofs on the miles of asphalt ])avement. But there is 
a part of the year when it is not heard. That is the lono- 
summer-time, when Washington is hot, and Avhen, in- 
stead of regarding the cajntal as a majestic monument to 
the Father of his Country, those who are forced to live 
there speak of the place as the sub-basement of Hades. 
Oh, how hot it is then ! The asphalt becomes hot lava. 
The horses' hoofs sink into it. The carriage wheels 
make ruts in it — ruts that quickly close up again as marks 
made in molasses will do. Detectives, equally hot upon 
the heels of a criminal, can trace the fugitive by his foot- 
prints where he has crossed a street. The beautiful city 
of gardens and palaces and power and pleasure becomes 
like a capital of the Congo country. 

There are plenty of people there at that time. Some- 
times Congress is sitting even in midsummer. But if it 
is not, still plenty are there — clerks, heads of dejiart- 
ments, the whole of bureaucracy and trade and depend- 
ent labor, led by the members of the well-to-do Avho 
must direct the machinoiy. What a queer ex]:)erience 
they have ! After dark they venture out for breath 
and gentle exercise, and the enjoyment of a respite from 
the terrors of the day ; to prepare for the terrors of the 
nio'bt in the bedrooms. At nine o'clock at nio-ht all is 
dark. Heavy shadows and light shadows cover every- 
thino;. All is silent as if it were a city on the Mozam- 
bique coast. Shadowy forms are seen on the porciies 
of the dwellings, on the high stoops and the galleries 
over the bay-windows. They are the women. They 
have learned a trick from their negress servants and 
from the fixed tropical conditions. It regards their 
dress, which is such that they Avoidd not tell how little 
they have on. Though it is a trifle, it is not to be told. 
Upon the porches and the balconies, out of reach, they 
can and do dress like Saiulwich Islanders. If a pedes- 

871 



trian' turns towards a house, these t'emhiine shadows 
rise and disappeai- in-doors. 

In time tlie })e(Jestrian turns in at his own gate and 
into his own becL Exhausted, he sleeps, but it is fitful 
sleeping, and every now and then he wakes to find his 
])illow drenched. On some nights — and there are ten 
such in every summer — the oxygen leaves the air, and it 
becomes dead and motionless. When day breaks and the 
city bustles and the sun rises high, one sees the air shim- 
mer in front of the Treasury Building as if that gray pile 
were a furnace. Then the people pray for rain. If it 
comes, it presents itself with tropical severity, in slant- 
ing sheets. It may do good, and probably does, but 
never enough to satisfy the populace. After it is over, 
the streets remind the beholder of pictures of the earth 
at the time of the coal formation — a hot, hissing, steam- 
ing mass. 

During the entire hot season the people have time and 
inclination to reflect upon the disadvantages of having 
two extremes of climate in one year, and upon the im- 
possibility of building a city to meet both extremes. 
Having to choose between the two, Washington neces- 
sarily elected to become a winter city. It is a Northern 
cit}^ on a Southern site. The winter is the time for busi- 
ness ; it is the period of one session of each Congress, 
and it is when the people of the North resort there to 
enjoy what we may call social AVashington. And yet 
it wjis not necessary to build the town of red brick and 
white asphalt. That was a sad mistake — a combination 
ingeniously contrived for turning the place into a cook- 
stove in summer. 

373 



X 

THE PLANTATION NEGRO 

No Northern man ever journeys far into the South 
without hearing that liis people do not understand the 
negro. Every vSouthern man and woraan says so. We 
do not know how to make the negro work, they sav; 
we do not know how few his wants are, and how eccen- 
tric they are; we do not know how to make him happy, 
how to treat him so that he will love us. I never un- 
derstood Avh}' this is so insisted upon. But I never went 
South without being impressed ])y the fact that no 
Northern man who has not been Soutii can even faintly 
appreciate the I'elation there between the whites and 
the colored people. We make fair treatment of the ne- 
gro votei' a ])olitical battle-cry. Our sense of justice 
compels this. But until all Northern men in politics 
have seen the South — have seen a certain black parish 
in Louisiana, for instance, whei'e there are 400 whites 
and 3000 blacks — it will not be easy for them to exer- 
cise patience, discrimination, and justice in the battle 
for fair |)lay. 

However, that is on the edge of politics, which have 
no place in this chapter. I am setting out only to nar- 
rate some anecdotes, and to describe some scenes which 
have tlie colored folks ])rominent in them. Once, when 
I was in a Massachusetts town, I saw the ])eople,in the 
newspaper office run to the windows to look at a negro. 
lie lived a few miles away, and was the only man of his 

878 



color in the neighborhood, so that he was looked upon 
as a curiosit}'. Not many 3'ears afterwards I found my- 
self in the town of Newcastle, Delaware. I saw colored 
people by the hundred. They stood in knots in the 
streets, they lay in the roadways basking in the sun, 
they tilled rows and rows of dwellings. Putting the 
two experiences together, I supposed I had seen the two 
extremes of the relation between the whites and the 
blacks. I know now that I had seen neither, for I have 
since been all through " the Black Belt," where even the 
mechanics are often colored men, and I have been where 
there are no negroes, as well as where negroes are sel- 
dom seen, and are admitted to a ])erfect equality with 
whites of the humbler class, even in the matter of wed- 
lock. That, of course, was in Europe. 

Such a condition as the latter is hard to understand, 
yet it can exist. A waitress in a quaint old temperance 
hotel in Liverpool, at which I once stopped, was indig- 
nant at the conduct and language of a Kentucky gentle- 
man wh(_) found himself at the same dining-table with a 
black missionary. She could not understand his feel- 
ings. She said she had supposed America " was where 
all men were equals.'' It transpired that she was en- 
oao-ed to marrv the colored preacher, and wore a rino- 
that marked her engagement to him. lie seemed a very 
nice and kindly man, she said, and she expected to en- 
dure three years of hard living in Liberia, ''in order to 
come back to New York with him and be made a lady." 
It was a disagreeable task to tell her how far from 
happy or respected she would be if she did come to New 
York as the white wife of a black man, but the truth 
caused the ending of the match. 

Last spring, on a Mississippi packet, I told that story 
to the Republican postmistress of a Mississippi river- 
side village. She was amazed. " The colored people all 

37-4 



love me where I live/' said she. " Some wQuld almost 
give their right hands to help me if I asked them. IJut 
I would starve to death before I would eat a crust of 
bread at the same table with one ; and rather than see 
my daughter at school with a colored child — as I have 
heard white children and black are schooled together 
in the North — I would see her grow up in ignorance. 
I am kindness itself to the negroes. I am the best 
friend and chief support of many of them ; but I 
want them to keep their place, as I mean to keep my 
own." 

There are the two extremes indeed. 

It is a curious fact — or it seems so until the reasons 
are studied — that one must go North to find the sharp- 
est and most unreasoning prejudice against the blacks. 
In a journey I once took, through a majority of the 
Southern States, I did not see a single instance of bru- 
tality towards the blacks by the whites ; but in Indi- 
ana, not long ago, I found a whole county where the 
people boasted that no negro was ever permitted to 
stay overnight. There was not a colored family or in- 
dividual in that county, which was the seat of the 
White Cap terrorism of a few years ago. And it was in 
Asbury Park, New Jersey, within fifty miles of New 
York (where the anti-negro riots once took place), that 
the people protested against the presence of colored 
persons on the "Boardwalk" or sea-side promenade of 
the village. Of course, there is a great diiference be- 
tween the colored people of the Black Belt and those in 
the North. Down South they are and always have been 
the laborers. Up North they are sometimes lawj'ers, 
teachers, tradesmen, and persons of means. It was in 
North Dakota that the wife of an editor boasted to me 
that she had an excellent colored kitchen-girl. "But," 
said she, "if I called her a servant, she would be very 



anoTv. We have to address her as ' Miss Revnokls ' in 
order to keep her with us." 

To me the colored folks form the most interesting 
spectacle in the South. They are so abunthmt every- 
■\vhere you travel; they are so eternallv happy, even 
against fate ; they are so picturesque and funny in 
dress and looks and s])eech ; their faults are so o]->en 
and so very human, and their virtues are so human and 
admirable. As I think of them, a dozen familiar scenes 
arise that are commonplace there, yet to a Kortherner 
are most interesting. I think of their fondness for 
fishing. Somebody has called fishing " idle time not 
idly spent," and that must be how the Southern colored 
people regard it, for they seem to be eternally at it 
wherever they and any piece of water, no matter how 
small, are thrown together. One would scarcely ex]")ect 
to find the New Orleans darkies given to fishing, yet it 
is a constant delight to them. They do not merely 
dangle their legs over the sides of the luggers and 
steamers to sit in meditative repose above a line thi'own 
into the 3^ellow Mississippi, but they fish in the canals 
and open sewers in the streets that lie just be^^ond the 
heart of the citv. It is delightful to see them. Those 
open waterways flowing between grassy banks out tow- 
ards the west end might seem ofl^ensive otherwise, but 
when at every few hundred feet a calm and placid 
neffro man, or a " mammv " with a brood of moon-faced 
pickaninnies sprawling beside her, is seen bent over the 
edges, pole in hand, the scenery becomes picturesque, 
and the sewers turn poetical. After one has seen a few 
darkies ])utting their whole souls into fishing it is pain- 
ful to see a white man with a rod and line. The white 
man always looks like an imitation and a fraud. 

From St. Louis to New Orleans, and all the way 
through the Gulf States, negroes and fish-]i<)les were for- 

8TG 



ever together, like the happiest subjects of wedlock. At 
least one dark}^ fishing dotted the water view. Along 
the lower Mississippi many colored men now own little 
farms of a few acres, with a log cabin, a rifle, a mule, a 
plough, some chickens and children, a wife, and a fish- 
ing-rod. When I passed by, the corn was planted, the 
s])ring-time sun was pleasantly warm, and these ebon 
monarchs were seated in their dugouts and skiflfs watch- 
ing their lines. Some hypercritical white men were 
apt to call attention to a gaping rent in the cabin roof, 
or to the fact that a day's toil at remunerative labor 
would bring the means to put in panes of glass where 
the window holes were stuffed with old trousers and 
hats. But that is according to how one looks at life. 
If happiness is its main aim, and the old hats and 
trousers keep the weather out, the fishermen have the 
best of the argument. The Indians on the plains be- 
lieve that tlie more a man is civilized, the more care 
and responsibility he has, and the darky planters who 
take nature into partnership on a three -acre claim 
know that the Indians are right. Down in Florida, 
where the St. John's River is narrow and very tor- 
tuous, the passengers on the regular boat one day last 
spring were occasionally startled by stentorian j^ells. 
" Hi, dar ! what you doin' ? Can't yer see what yer 
about? Don't you come a-nigh me." The reason was 
evident. A colored man here and there had fallen asleep 
over his fishing-rod, and the great muddy wave which 
the steamer sucked along behind her had engulfed his 
little boat, and startled the fisherman out of half his 
senses. 

In every view of the country outside the cities one 
gets an idea of how greatly the negroes are in the ma- 
jority. At the plantation landings on the river-sides one 
sees the planter's house standing alone, while near by 



thei-e is alwaj^s a huddle of negro cabins, or perhaps a 
double row of them forming a little street, or a great scat- 
tering of them over the fields. Sometimes they are neat 
and in goo'd repair, Ijut neatness is far fi*om being a 
characteristic of field life in the Southern States. As a 
rule, the cabins are dilapidated, their yards are littered, 
the fences are in ruins, and even the harness on the 
horses and mules is made up of tatters of leather, rope, 
and chains. It is a mystery how the average field hand 
keeps his or her garments from falling off in pieces, for 
they hang on in pieces almost like the scales on a fish. 

Wherever a boat lands or a train stops, one is sure to 
find half a dozen, or even two dozen, negroes to each 
white person in the crowd that gathers on the levee or 
at the station. At one boat-landing in Florida I saw the 
colored "dominie," or preacher, followed down to the 
levee by a knot of his female parishioners. It was a 
burlesque on a burlesque, for it parodied Bunthorne in 
the comic opera of " Patience." He was a very stout 
and comfortable parson, not without a double shine 
upon his broadcloth, partly of wear and partly of grease. 
Like Bunthorne, he rather lorded it over the women, 
paying very little attention to them, and standing apart 
like a superior being. I wondered that he did not give 
his carpet-bag to one of them to carry. They stood in 
twos and threes, snickering and giggling, with little 
rolly-poly babies chngmg to the skirts of some. Each 
woman had some red about her ; if not a red dress, it 
was a red shawl or a I'ed waist or red hood. And they 
chewed tobacco. These are two common inclinations of 
the female sex among the negroes — a love of red and of 
tobacco. The dominie had a Napoleonic face and great 
gravity, but I am sorry to say that the latter quality was 
seriously disturbed when he took his departure on our 
boat. The gang-plank had to be put almost straight up 

:5r9 



and down to connect the boat with the river-bank, and 
the imfortnnate dominie slipped on the top of it, threw 
his carpet-bag in the air, and went down the plank like 
a barrel, to land in a heap on the steamboat deck. To 
the cries of " Did yer hurt yevV by his disciples he vol- 
unteered no reply ; but later, when he had brushed the 
Hour and dirt off his coat and was calm again, he was 
graciously })leased to remark, " You may tell der conger- 
gation I will be wid dem in de spirit, and will soon re- 
turn if de Lord spares me." 

On the same trip I heard a pathetic bit of a dialogue 
between two colored women who were waiting for a 
train. 

" Hello, Lize I" one said. '' Dat's a nice dress you 
got on." 

The other replied that it was, and ought to be, as it 
cost seven dollars. "But." said she, "der seams are all 
made so coa'se and clumsy, Ts a'most ashame to be 
seen." 

"Well, don't 3'ou know why dat is r' the other re- 
plied. " It's 'cause you're colored. White folks gits 
what (ley ^vant ; colored folks takes what dey gits — and 
dey gits de wors' ebery time." 

But to return to their numbers. At every landing on 
the rivers the banks were lined by idle colored people 
from the fields and villages, and the white men were 
always very few ; the white women seldom seen at all. 
It always seemed to me that these idlers enjoyed seeing 
the roustabout boat crews do their heavy work — and 
very heavy work it is that these negro deck hands per- 
form. They use no barrows or trucks, but " tote " nearly 
everything on their heads and shoulders. For this pur- 
])ose merchandise is put up in suitable packages in the 
South and West, the sugar and fiour and meal l)eing put 
in sacks, and the other staples being divided into small 

:580 



boxes, packages, and barrels. All day long, and often 
all night as well, the roustabouts put on and take off the 
freight at the frequent stations, not merely dumping it 
on a wharf — for there are no wharves — but carrying it 
up the banks and into the sheds and stoi'ehouses at each 
place. 

One boat on which I travelled carried fifty of these 
tireless human jxick- horses ; the smallest crew I saw 
was half that size. They slept as best they could — in 
their clothing — on the main-deck near the boilers, and 
they were dressetl as fortune had favored them — which 
is to say, mainly in rags. They worked in processions, 
like ants, one line moving one way loaded, and the other 
returning empty-handed. Their common gait was a 
trot, for this primitive mode of moving a cargo is slow 
at best, and the loads would never be put on or off if 
the men walked. So they went at a dog-trot, hitching 
up their trousers, rolling like sailors, scraping their feet, 
and slouching along, and all the while chanting or mut- 
tering some singsong phrases. They livened up every 
little village they came to, making such a noise and 
bustle that it was rather a wonder that everybody, 
white and black, did not turn out to share the excite- 
ment than that the idle darkies were the only lookers- 
on. The Mississippi River hands got a dollar a day for 
their almost superhuman work — the very hardest I ever 
saw performed anywhere or by anybody. They were a 
dull and almost barbaric-looking crew, and I was told 
that they drank up all their earnings at Natchez and 
New Orleans, where the boat lines terminate, and that 
they carried knives and razors, and were scarred all over 
their bodies as the result of their frequent fights and 
([uarrels. Of course that was one-sided testimony, but I 
learned lono" ago that there are two sorts of colored foUcs 
in the South — the rude dull field hands and the spruce. 



polite, and far more intelligent and ambitious house-serv- 
ants — both originating in and descending from similar 
classes in the time of slavery. 

In New Orleans I was shown the quarter in which the 
roustabouts throw away their earnings, and it is safe to 
say that there is not in any other of the capitals of 
Christendom such a spectacle of low and almost absent 
morality. The dance-house, which is the headquarters 
of the district, suggested a place in the heart of Africa 
at a savage raerryraaking. The ]ilace was small, not 
much higlier than the people's heads, dark, smoky, and 
intensel}^ hot. The women were in one long line, and 
the men in anothei*, facing them, as in a Virginia reel. 
The dancing was primitive, the only figures being a 
jig by both lines preparatory to a general swinging of 
partners. The ]^lace was curiousl}^ called " the coonje 
dance-house.*' 

Once, when Mr. Smedley and I were taking a steam- 
boat trip on a Louisiana bayou, we rechned on a pile of 
sacks of freight the better to enjoy comfort and the 
scenery at once. AVe attracted the attention and in- 
terest of the roustabouts. We heard them talk to t)ne 
another about us as they ])assed bowed under back- 
bending loads. 

'' Il'm !" said one. *' Guess dem gemmen been steam- 
boatin' befo'. Never seen white folks la}^ around on de 
freight that way. Seen niggers do it, though." 

Almost always what they said was interesting, either 
in itself or because of the rich-toned voices and peculiar 
dialect they used. Sometimes what they were heard 
to say was extremely laughable. On this steamer the 
poor fellows had a night of almost incessant work on 
the heels of a day of frequent landings. They were 
tired ; indeed, I never will be able to understand how 
they performed the tasks that were set them, though, on 

382 



the other hand, their all day of work was preceded and 
followed by days of idleness. This is how we heard 
them discuss the situation. 

" I don't work on dis yer boat no moV said one. 

" Work on dis yer boat V another exclaimed. *' I 
Avouldn't work agin on dis boat ef she was loaded wid 
griddle - cakes, an" de molasses was drippin' ober de 
sides." 

"I," said the first speaker — ''I wouldn't wt)rk agin on 
dis yer boat ef she was loaded wid rabbits, and dey was 
all jumpin' off.'' 

With that word -picture of a boat's cargo that was 
able to unload itself the roustabout threw a sack of 
grain upon his shoulders and slouched up the gang- 
plank, apparently unconscious that he had said anything 
at all humorous or uncommon. 

In Tallahassee we had a coach -driver who kindly 
showed us the town, including "the Colored Af'can 
Church." There is a street or road there which has 
upon it a cemetery and a seminary. The two words 
confused our guide. " Some says cemetery and some 
says seminary," said he. " I can't rightly judge which 
is de mos' correct." 

We visited several cabins of the field hands on differ- 
ent plantations, and for my part I was astonished at the 
disorder and uncleanness they displayed. I never saw 
worse habitations, except the tepees of wild Indians. In 
the North it is noticeable that colored women keep their 
rooms tidy, and their children are particularly well cared 
for, as compared with the children of white persons in 
similar circumstances ; but in these field cabins the con- 
ditions were reversed. Thus again we saw the line 
drawn between the mere laborers and the upper serv- 
ants, for the maids and men at work in tiie planters' 
houses were usually smart in appearance and orderly in 

383 



their work. Tlie manner of treating the two classes 
was just as different. I had no opportunit}' to see any 
work performed in tlie lields, but the kiborers on the 
boats and in the freight depots were ''bossed'' by mates 
of severe aspect and terrific voices, who distributed 
tliemselves where tlie}" could watcli every "hand'' at liis 
work, and could spur them incessantly by shouts, and 
often by profanity. I heard a great deal about violence 
by these mates, but saw none exercised, and cannot say 
tiiat their manner was unkindly in spirit. They simply 
acted on each crew as a pair of spurs are used on an 
unwilling horse. 

In the cases of the house -servants there was a dia- 
metric change. Every born Southerner who was spoken 
to on the subject seemed to have in his employ some 
old and faithful servant, and all had enjoyed the care of 
some "mammy," either dead and tenderly remembered, 
or alive and gently cared for. Stories of one-time skives 
who had never left their former owners are still plenty, 
and reveal the attachment these better -class servants 
developed for their homes and masters. A brave gen- 
eral of the Confederacy told me a sample story of the 
ploiisant side of the relations between the masters and 
slaves, as typical to-day as in slavery times. His body- 
servant had married just before leaving for the seat of 
war. Years passed, and one day the general said to the 
servant : " Tom. an officer is about to start for the neigh- 
borhood of our home. You have not seen your wife for 
a long while, and if you go with this officer you will 
have a chance to visit or even to remain with her." 

" Pshaw^ !" said the servant. " Tink I do dat ? How 
on earth could you git along widout me? You must 
tink I goin' crazy." 

And here is a story of to-day. It is about another 
general, who is fond of his cups. One day his body- 

884 



servant, seeing tiiat he was tipsy, took his watch and 
mone}'' for safe-keeping. 

''See here/' said the general, "you are taking a 
great deal of liberty with me. Td like to know who 
is boss." 

'' Well, Marse ," said the servant, " I reckon when 

you's sober, yon's de boss ; l)nt wiien you's drunk, tings 
is different." 

There is a very curious side to tlie relationship be- 
tween the house -servants and the employers which has 
no counterpart among white persons of differing circum- 
stances. An artist, looking about New Orleans for char- 
acteristic costumes to be used by models for his paint- 
ings, discovered that there are few seccmd- hand clothino- 
shops in that city, and that those which are there offer 
only the most ragged cast-off raiment of the negroes. 
The reason is that the white men and women give their 
clothing to the colored peojile — to servants or depend- 
ents — when it is no longer serviceable for them. Of 
course I cannot speak too generall}^ or positively, but it 
seems to me that every man and woman is accustomed 
to make this use of his or her discarded goods, and that 
every white family has at least one colored family in 
charge in this way. The servants look upon this de- 
scent of clothing and finery as a right, and the depend- 
ents take it for granted that what remains shall be 
theirs. Everywhere I went I heard stories illustrative 
of this queer relation between the races. In a conver- 
sation about the reason for the common assertion that 
"all darkies will steal," a planter thus expressed himself: 

" It is true that they all ' take things'," said he ; *' but 
they make a difference between stealing and taking. 
E'er instance, they will not steal money if you leave it 
on every mantel-piece and bureau in a house. It is the 
same with jewelry. They condemn such a, theft as 



severely as we do. But they pilfer provisions and cloth- 
ing with easy consciences. Servants are apt to have 
poor relatives or friends, to whom a never-ceasing stream 
of tea, sugar, flour, bacon, and other necessaries finds 
its way from your kitchen door. That is not stealing, 
in their opinion, nor is it stealing to clothe themselves 
with your apparel if they need clothes, or if they imag- 
ine you have more than you require." 

I heard two stories to illustrate this. In one case a 
servant was detected with a heavy basket going out of 
the garden gate. Asked what she was carrying away, 
she replied, "Nothing." Pressed to be more specific, 
she lifted the lid of the basket and exhibited a generous 
and miscellaneous load of selections from the larder. 
"Dey's nothing 'cept 'fluities," she said, meaning "su- 
perfluities." In another instance a man-servant boldly 
appeared in his master's trousers. "I was 'shamed to 
see you hab 'em any longer," said he ; " you done wore 
dem pants at leas' five year, an' I need 'em." 

They cannot resist the tem])tation to take medicine. 
It is almost an absolute rule in the South that every 
negro will say he or she is " poorly " or " not very well 
dis mawnin', sah," if their health is asked after, even 
with the stereotyped salutation, " How are you?" Per- 
haps they are not well and never feel so. At all events, 
I am told that the house servants constantly take doses 
of whatever medicine their employers leave about, antl 
if a bottle of ])hysic is thrown away it is pretty certain 
to be taken " all at once " by whatever darky finds it. 

It is apparent that we in the ISTorth do not treat the 
colored people as our white brethren of the South do ; 
but whether we know how to treat them is as difficult 
to decide as it is to discover what rules govern their 
treatment in the South. There the common laborers 
are ruled almost as severely as old-time sailors on a 

880 



wooden packet, while the house -servants are permitted 
hberties and familiarities repugnant to our sense of 
what is fit between employer and "help." 

I have not sought to discuss the merits of the political 
situation, or the })robabilities of the negro's future in the 
South. They seem happy there, in the main, and many 
who have emigrated to the West during recent " crazes " 
have toiled back again, singing of their love for ''Dixie's 
land." Many Northern men established in business in 
the South declare that white men can never fill the place 
the colored man occupies as a general laborer there. The 
most serious question is that of the free ballot, but there 
are two sides to that. If we lived with our wives and 
children in a lonely planter's house in a region where a 
far ruder people outnumbered us ten to one, it is possible 
that we would get a glimpse of a side not visible from 
any Northern standpoint. But even then we might not 
see why the education of the colored man, the presence 
and example of newly imported European labor, the 
steady influx of new peoples and Northern capital 
should not some day alter the conditions there, and 
I'emove the complaints. Time is needed, and with it 
patience. 

387 



XI 
THE NEW GROWTH OF ST. LOUIS 

Population and wealth are classified by the same 
standards. In both cases a million is the utmost figure 
that is po})ulai'ly comprehended. A million of citizens 
or of dollars suggests the ripening of success in both 
fields. It is true that London has five millions of citi- 
zens and the Astors have thirty times as many dollars; 
but Loiulon is simply one of the world's capitals, and the 
Astors are but millionaires in tlie general thought and 
speech. In America we are growing familiar with big 
figures, and now it seems logically likely that another 
town will soon increase our acquaintance with them. It 
startled the English-speaking world to learn that Chicago 
had reached the million mark, but to-day we foresee that 
in a few years— perhaps the next census will record it — 
St. Louis is to share the honor with her. No other 
Western city has such a start in the race. It is true, if 
the signs are to be trusted, that the Twin Cities — Min- 
neapolis and St. Paul— may then have a joint po{)ulation 
of a million, but St. Louis is the commercial rival of all 
three of her great Northern neighbors, and is drawing- 
trade which they were seeking, while the Twins are sep- 
arate cities. The only millionaire towns, so to speak, 
will be Chicago and St. Louis. 

St. Louis is already the fifth in size among the cities 
of the land, and would he fourth if Brooklyn were rated 
what she is in fact — a bedchamber of New York. But 

:!S8 



it is the new growth of St. Louis, her re-start in hfe, that 
is most significant and interesting ; it began so recently, 
and is gatiiering moiiientum so fast. And we shall see 
that never was city's growth more firmly rooted or gen- 
uine. What is accomplished there is performed without 
trumpeting or blustei", by natural causes, and witli the 
advantages of conservatism and great wealth. More 
remarkable yet, and still more admirable, the new 
growth of the city is superimposed upon an old foun- 
dation. It is an age. as this world goes, since tins proud 
city could be called new and crude. The greater St. 
Louis of the near future will be a fine, dignified, solid 
city, with a firmly established and polished society, cul- 
tivated tastes, and the monuments, ornaments, and at- 
mosphere of an old ca})ital. 

1 have had occasion once ov twice in tlie course 
of my studies of the develo]mient of our West to 
speak of what may be called the "booming organiza- 
tions"' which father the commercial interests of the 
more ambitious cities, and in some instances of the 
newer States. These should have had more promi- 
nence, and should have been mentioned moi'e frequently. 
Though they have nothing to do with the governments 
of the cities, they are, like the governments, the instru- 
ments of the united will of the people, working for the 
general good ; and when they and the governments con- 
flict, the will of " the boomers'' often rises supreme above 
the local laws. For instance, it was announced in one 
city that the excise laws would be ignored, in order that 
the place might prove more attractive to a convention of 
politicians while they were the city's guests. Thei'e are 
good reasons for such supremacy of these powerful and 
active unions. Their leading spirits are always the most 
energetic and enterprising men in the cities, and their 
interest in their schemes for the general advantage is 

38$) 



more enthusiastic than that which is felt in the govern- 
ment. 

The |)hnise ''booming organizations'" is applied to 
these institutions for the benefit of Xorthern and trans- 
atlantic readers. It is not altogether satisfactory to 
the persons to whom it is applied, because, in parts of 
the South and West, booming is a word that is coupled 
with unwarranted and disastrous inflation, as when a 
new town is made the field of adventure for town-site 
and corner-lot gamblers. I use the phrase as we did 
when we succeeded in getting General Horace Porter 
to "boom" the completion of the Grant monument 
in Riverside Park. To "boom," then, is to put a plan 
generally and favorably before tlie people, to put a 
scheme in motion with eclat^ to vaunt the merits of 
an undertaking. And that is what is done with and 
for the interest and merits of the newer cities by these 
organizations, which are there variously known as Boards 
of Trade, Chambers of Commerce, and Commercial Clubs. 
They are in essence what our Chambers of Commerce in 
Eastern seaports are, but in some cities they Avork apart 
from the Chamber of Commerce and on separate lines, 
while in others they do some of the same work and a 
great deal else that is very different. They are in some 
cities what an engine is to a machine-shop or a locomo- 
tive is to a railway train. AVhoever visits a city that is 
well equipped in this respect feels the pulsations and is 
conscious of the power and influence of its P)Oard of 
Trade, as we note the presence of the dynamo in a boat 
that is lighted by electricity. 

These unions consider the needs of their cities, and 
set to work to supply them. They raise the money for 
a fine hotel, if one is lacking ; and in at least one city 
of which I know they turn what trade they can over to 
the hotel after it is built, even going to the extreme of 

390 



giving a grand annual banquet there, and paying a 
purely fancy price per plate to the lessee of the house, 
in order that he may get a good profit out of it. 
They raise the means to build street railroads ; they or- 
ganize companies for the erection and maintenance of a 
tirst-class theatre in such a city, for the holding of an 
annual fair or carnival parade, for the construction of a 
great hall, to which they afterwards invite conventions. 
These ventures are not all expectetl to be profitable by 
any means, particularly in the smaller cities ; but they 
are " attractions," they swell the local pride, they pro- 
mote that civicism which is such a truly marvellous fac- 
tor in the even more marvellous progress of our Western 
cities. But these local unions go farther. They obtain 
the passage of laws exempting certain manufactures 
from license fees and taxes on the buildings in which 
they are carried on, and then they induce manufac- 
turers to establish their workshops in those cities, giv- 
ing them bonuses in the form of exemption from taxes, 
in the form of a gift of land, or even of a gift of a build- 
ing designed and constructed as the recipients desire to 
have it. To give one illustration out of ten thousand, 
the little town of Rapid City, South Dakota, gave a 
noble storehouse of brick and stone to a wholesale oto- 
eery firm for coming there to do business. To give an- 
other view of the subject, the editor of an influential 
newspaper in one of the ambitious smaller cities of the 
AVest resigned his membership in the local Board of 
Trade because he said it contained so many wealthy 
men, and they so frequently subscribed large sums of 
money for public improvements, that he was uncom- 
fortable at the meetings, and preferred to do his share 
of the work outside " until he had made his pile " and 
could '' chip in with the rest." 

These commercial circles send committees to Congress, 

391 



to tlie heads of great societies, to the capitalists of the 
East and of the Old World, to urge their needs and mer- 
its, for especial ends. They cause the building of rail- 
roads anil railroad spurs ; they print books, pamphlets, 
and '' folders "" to scatter praise of their cities Avher- 
ever English is read. They stoj) at nothing which will 
tend towards the advancement of their local interests. 
They are unions of business men, land-owners, and capi- 
talists ; but, as in all things, one man is the dominant 
spirit and tlie most fertile in expedients. This is usually 
the secretary, who is a salarietl officer. Men with an 
especial genius for the work drift into such positions, 
and wlien the}'^ prove especially and signally ca])able 
officials, such as those are who are in St. Paul, Spokane, 
and St. Louis, other cities try to secure them. 

St. Louis has one of the most progressive and influen- 
tial of tliese liodies in its Merclumts' Exchange. It 
is by no means a mere exchange. It does very much of 
the work towards the pubUc and general good of which 
I have s})oken ; indeed, it may be said tliat the entire 
Southwest, and the immense territory drained by the 
Mississippi, find in it the ablest and most active cham- 
pion of tiieir needs. It is to the central West and 
the Southwest what our Chamber of Commerce is to 
New York and the commercial interests of the Atlantic 
coast. 

But with the sudden assumption of a new youthful- 
ness, in old St. Louis there has sprung up an auxiliary, 
or, at all events, another organization for the exploita- 
tion and advancement of local interests. It is called 
" The Autumnal Festivities Association," and is one of 
the most remarkable of the mediums through which 
American enterprise works. 

The story of its inception and organization, with the 
incidents I gathered concerning the firelike rush of the 

893 



movement among- all classes of St. Louis citizens, pre- 
sents a ])eculiarly clear reflection of the character of 
the new life that now dominates that city. 

AVhen St. Louis failed to secure the World's Fair, in- 
stead of sinking back discouraged, its leading men con- 
chided that one fault with tlie city must l)e that its 
merits were not as Avidely or as clearly understood as 
was necessary. Therefore, in the spring of 1IS91, a 
meeting was called at the Ex])osition Building to dis- 
cuss the advisability of forming an organization which, 
for three years at least, should devote itself to celebrat- 
ing the achievements and adding to the attractions of 
the city. From the stage the crude plan of the campaign 
was announcetl, and suggestions from the audience were 
asked for. As my informants put it, •' the first ' sug- 
gestion' was a subscription of $10,000 from a dry-goods 
firm; the second was a. similar gift from a rich tobac- 
conist. Then came two subscriptions of $7500 each, 
and others of amounts between $5000 and $1000. Mr. 
John S. Moffitt, a leading merchant, as chairman of the 
Finance Committee, ])romised to undertake the raising 
of one million dollars within three years, and received 
pi'omises of sums amounting to $100,000 on that first 
evening. The sense of the meeting was that this large 
amount should be expended in attracting visitors to the 
city, and in interesting and caring for them after they 
came. 

A sum of money was set aside as a bonus for any 
persons who should buikl a one million dollar fire-proof 
hotel in the city, on a site to be approved by the execu- 
tive committee. It was resolved to approjiriate as nmch 
as would be needed to illuminate the city with between 
20.ti00 and 100,000 gas and electric lights on especial 
evenings during each year's autumnal festivities, and 
committees were appointed to look after illuminations, 

■dm 



transportation, and whatever. It was also arranged 
that one-third of the full amount raised should be ex- 
pended under the supervision of a branch of the organ- 
ization to be called the Bureau of Information, and to 
be headed by Mr. Goodman King as chairman. Mr. 
James Cox, who had been the managing editor of one 
of the daily newspapers, became the secretary of this 
bureau. It has offices in St. Louis, and it arranged to 
open others in London and other cities in pursuit of a 
systematic effort to advertise the commercial, social, and 
sanitary advantages which St. Louis possesses. 

Without waiting for the raising of the prescribed 
amount of money, the association fell to work at once, 
and the illuminations and festivities of the autumn of 
1S91 attracted hundreds of thousands of persons to the 
city, and were characterized as the finest displays of 
their kind that had up to that time been made in the 
country. In the mean time the Finance Committee be- 
gan its task of raising a million of dollars. It adopted 
a shrewdly devised plan. Every trade was appealed to 
with a request that a committee be appointed and a 
canvass be made within its own field. Within a week 
2U0 such sub-eommittees were at work. Each vied with 
the other in an effort to secure the largest sum, and sub- 
scriptions, in sums that ranged between three dollars 
and $5000, poured in. Those who did not subscribe 
promised to do so at a later time. In answer to about 
4000 applications by these committees, it is said that 
there were only five refusals to join the popular move- 
ment. 

It had not occurred to the leaders, even in this general 
sifting of the population, to ask the pohce for any sub- 
scriptions, the feeling being that the money was to be 
expended for purposes that would greatly increase their 
work ; but, after waiting for months to be asked to join 

394 



the movement, the police force applied for a thou- 
sand subscription cards, appointed their own collectors, 
and sent the money to the association headquarters in 
silver dollars carried in sacks. The citizens who were 
not directly appealed to — the lawj^ers and doctors 
and all the rest — sent in their checks, and five months 
after the organization was effected the finance com- 
mittee reported the receipt of two-tliirds of the total 
amount that was to have been raised in three years, 
or $600,000. 

It will be seen that this association was formed after 
the city failed to secure the AVorld's Fair, and that its 
term of duration covers the period of preparation for 
and the holding of the exposition. It was not antago- 
nistic to tlie fair, however, but was simply due to the de- 
termination of St. Louis not to be lost sio-ht of, and 
not to hide its light under a bushel, while the country 
was filled with visitors to Chicago. 

It may cause a smile to read tliat Chairman King and 
Secretary Cox report, in a circular now before me, what 
work the Bureau of Information has done " to correct 
any false impressions which have been created by the 
too great modesty of St. Louisans in the past." Ikit they 
are right, for, as compared with its rivals, St. Louis pos- 
sessed that defect, and the frank admission of such a 
hated fault shows how far removed and reformed from 
retarding bashfulness that city has since become. The 
bureau reports that it is causing the publication of half- 
page advertisements' of St. Louis, precisely as if it were 
a business or a patent-medicine, in sixt3"-two papers, cir- 
culating more than a million copies ; that it has ob- 
tained reading notices in all those dailies ; that "articles 
on St. Louis as a manufacturing and commercial me- 
tropolis and as a carnival city " are sent out every day ; 
that arrangements are making for a weekly mail letter 

395 



to 500 Southern and AVestern journals; and that once 
or twice a week news items are sent to the principal 
dailies of the whole country. It was found that St. 
T.ouis was not fairly treated in the weekly trade re- 
ports ]>ublished generally throughout the country, and 
this source of com})laint has been removed. Invading 
the camp of the arch-enemy — Chicago — the bureau 
has caused a handsome " guide to Chicago " to atld to 
its title the words "and St. Louis, the carnival city 
of America." It has also got up a rich and notable 
book, called 'V. Loins througJi <i Caiiiera^ for circula- 
tion among all English-speaking peoples. The local 
service for the press telegraphic agencies has been 
gi-eatly imprcjved, "'and the efforts of the bureau to in- 
crease the number and extent of the notices of St. Louis 
in the daily papers throughout the United States have 
continued to prove successful," so that "instead of St. 
Louis being ignored or referred to in a very casual man- 
ner, it is now recognized as full}^ as any other large 
city in America." 

I have described the operations of this association 
and its most active bureau at some length, because they 
exiiibit the farthest extreme yet reached in the devel- 
opment of the most extraordinary phase of that which 
we call Western enterprise, though it has long since 
cre]it far into the South. There we see a city managed 
l)v its people as a wide-awake modern merchant looks 
after his business. It is advertised and "written up" 
and pushed upon the attention of the world, with all its 
good features clearly and proudly set forth. There is 
boasting in the process, but it is always based upon 
actual merit, for St. Louis is an old and proud city; and 
there is no begging at all. The methods are distinctly 
legitimate, and the work accomplished is hard work, 
])aid for l)y hard cash. It is considered a shrewd invest- 

896 



ment of energy and capital, and not a speculation. If 
we in the jSTortliern cities, who are said to be '' fossil- 
ized," are not inclined to imitate such a remarkable ex- 
ample of enterprise, we cannot help admiring the con- 
cord and the hearty local pride from which it springs. 

St. Louis is the one large city of the South and West 
(for it belongs to both sections) in wliich a man from 
our Nortliern cities would feel at once at home. It 
seems to require no more explanation tlian IJoston would 
to a New Yorker, or Baltimore to a Bostonian. It speaks 
for itself in a familiar language of street scenes, archi- 
tecture, and the faces and manners of the people. In 
saying this I make no comparison that is unfavorable 
to other cities, for it is not unfriendly to say tliat their 
most striking characteristic is their newness, or that 
this is lacking in St. Louis. And yet to-day St. Louis 
is new-born, and her appearance of age and of simi- 
larity to the older cities of the Northeast belies her. 
She is not in the least what she looks. Ten or a dozen 
years ago there began the operation of influences which 
were to rejuvenate her, to fill her old veins with new 
l)lood, to o'ive her the momentum of the most vigorous 
AYestern entei'prise. Six or seven years ago these be- 
gan to bear fruit, and the new metropolitan spirit com- 
menced to throb in the veins of the old city. The 
change is not like the awakening of Rip A"an Winkle, 
for the city never slept; it is rather a repetition of the 
case of that bov ffod of mvtholoofv whose slender form 
grew sturdy when his brother was born. It was the 
new life around the old that spurred it to sudden 
growth. 

There is much striving and straining to fix upon a 
reason for the growth of St. Louis, and in my conversa- 
tions with a irreat number of citizens of all sorts Ije- 
tween the City Hall and the Merchants' Exchange. I 

;597 



heard it ascribed to tlie cheapness of coal, iron, and 
wood ; to river improvement, reconstructed streets, 
manufactures, and even to poHtics. All these are parts 
of the reason, the whole of which carries us back to the 
late war. In the war-time the streets of St. Louis were 
green with grass because the tributary country was cut 
off. After the war, and until a dozen years ago, the 
tide of immigration was composed of the hardy races 
of Northern Europe, who were seeking their own old 
climate in the New AYorld. Chicago Avas the great 
gainer among the cities. That tide from Northern Eu- 
rope not only built up Chicago, but it poured into the 
now well-settled region around it, where are found such 
cities as St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth, Milwaukee, Oma- 
ha, and a hundred considerable places of lesser size. It 
was a consequence of climatic and, to a less extent, of 
political and social conditions, and it caused St. Louis to 
stand still. But for the past twelve or more years the tide 
of immigration has been running into the Southwest, 
into Missouri, and the country south and southwest of it. 

St. Louis is commonly spoken of as the capital of the 
Mississippi Valley, but her field is larger. It is true that 
there is no other large city between her and New Or- 
leans — a distance of SCO miles — but there is no other on 
the way to Kansas Cit3% 283 miles ; or to Chicago, 2S0 
miles ; or for a long way east or southwest. Her trib- 
utary territory is every State and city south of her; 
east of her, to the distance of 150 miles; north, for a 
distance of 250 miles ; and in the West and Southwest 
as far as the Rocky Mountains. 

Between 1880 and 1890 the State of Missouri gained 
more than half a million of inhabitants ; Arkansas gained 
326,000; Colorado, 300,000; Kansas, 430,000; Ken- 
tucky, 200,000 ; Nebraska, 600,000 ; Texas, 610,000 ; 
Utah, 61,000 ; New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma, 

398 



114,000. Here, then, was a gain of 3,lT4,<i()u in po})u- 
lation in St. Louis's tributary country, and this has not 
only been greatly added to in the last two and a lialt 
years, but it leaves out of account the gi'owth in popu- 
lation of the States of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, ]\Iissis- 
sippi, and Louisiana. St. Louis had 350,518 souls in 
1880; now she calls herself a city of lialf a million in- 
habitants. Her most envious critics grant that she has 
470,000 souls. In 1891 permits Avere granted for 4435 
new buildings, to cost $13, 251), 370, only eleven hundred 
thousand dollars of the sum being for wooden houses. 

The citv now has 347^ miles of paved streets, and 
they are no longer the streets of crumbling limestone, 
which once almost rendered the ]ilace an abomination. 
They now are as fine thoroughfares as any city pos- 
sesses, 272 miles being of macadam, 41 of granite blocks, 
and the rest being mainly of wooden blocks, asphaltum, 
and other modern materials. A system of boulevards, 
of great extent and beauty, is planned and begun. Xew 
waterworks are being constructed be3^ond the present 
ones at a cost of four millions of dollars, but with the 
result that a daily supply of one hundred millions of gal- 
lons will be insured. The principal districts of the city 
are now electrically lighted. A new million-dollar hotel 
is promised. 

The old city, with its stereoty]^ed forms of dwellings 
and stores, is being rapidly rebuilt, and individual tastes, 
which search the world for types, are dominating the 
new growth. The new residence quarters, where the 
city is reaching far from the river in the vicinage of the 
great parks, are very pretty and open, and are embel- 
lished w^ith a great number of splendid mansions. In 
the*heart of the cit\" are many high, modern oHice ))uikl- 
ings. They are not towering stee[)les, as in Chicago, 
nor are they massed together. They are scattered over 

399 



the unusually extended business district, and in their 
company is an uncommon number of very lai'ge and 
substantial warehouses, whicli would scarcely attract 
the eye of a New Yorker, because they form one of the 
striking resemblances St. Louis, both new and old, l)ears 
to the metropolis. The most conspicuous of the office 
buildings are distinguished for their massive walls and 
general strength. Beside some of the Chicago and Min- 
neapolis buildings of the same sort they appear dark 
and crowded, and are rather more like our own office 
piles, where room is very high-priced. But they are 
little worlds, like their kind in all the enterprising 
towns, having fly-away elevators, laundry offices, drug- 
shops, type -writers' headquarters, barber shops, gentle- 
men's furnishing shops, bootblacks' stands, and so on. 

But in praising the new orders of architecture in St. 
Louis I do not mean to condemn all of the old. The 
public and serai-public edifices of its former eras should 
be, in my opinion, the pride of her people. That culti- 
vated taste which led to the revival of the pure and the 
classic in architecture, especially in the capitals of the 
Southern States, found full ex})ression in St. Louis, and 
it commands praise from whoever sees such examples of 
it as the Court-house, the old Cathedral, and several 
other notable buildings. AVhat was ugly in old St. Louis 
was that cut - and - dried uniformity in storehouses and 
dwellings which once made jSTew York tiresome and 
Philadelphia hideous. 

But to return to the size and growth of the city. Tt 
reaches along the river front nineteen miles. It extends 
six and sixty-two one-hundredth miles inland, and it con- 
tains 4:0,0()0 acres, or 61.87 square miles. This immense 
territory is well served by a great and thoroughly niod- 
ern system of surface street railways, having more than 
214 miles of tracks, and run almost entirely by electric 

400 



and cable power. Some of the newer cars in use on the 
electric roads are as large again as our New Yorlc street 
cars, and almost half as large as steam railway coaclies. 
Their rapid movements, their flashing head - liglits at 
night, and the cling-clang of the cracked-sounding gongs 
in the streets seem to epitomize the rush and force of 
American enterprise. There is an element of sorcery 
in both of them — in modern progress and in the electric 
cars. AV'as it not Dr. Holmes who likened those cars to 
witches flying along with their broomsticks sweeping 
the air? 

If Chicago was not the first, it was at least a very 
early railway centre in the West, and her citizens are 
right in ascribing to that fact much of her prosperity. 
To-day St. Louis 1ms become remarkable as a centring- 
place of railways. The city is like a hub to these spokes 
of steel that reach out in a circle, which, unlike that of 
most other towns of prominence, is nowhere broken by 
lake, sea, or mountain chain. Nine very important rail- 
roads and a dozen lesser ones meet there. The mileage 
of the roads thus centring at the city is 25,678, or nearly 
11.000 more than in ISSO, while the mileage of roads 
that are tributary to the city has grown from 35,000 to 
more than 57,000. These railways span the continent 
from New York to San Francisco. They reach from 
New Orleans to Chicago, and from the Northwestern 
States to Florida. Throuijh Pullman cars are now run 
from St. Louis to San Francisco, to the city of Mexico, 
and to St. Augustine and Tampa in the season. New 
lines that have the city as their objective point are ]H'o- 
jected, old lines that have not gone there are preparing 
to build connecting branches, and several of the lai'gest 
systems that reach there are just now greatl_y increasing 
their terminal facilities in the city with notable works 
and at immense cost. Tlie new railway bridge across 
3c 401 



tlie river is yet a novelty, but it has been followed 
by a union depot, which is said to l)e the most commodi- 
ous passenger station in the world. It embraces all 
the latest and most admirable concomitants of a first- 
class station, and is substantial and costly, following 
an architectural design which renders it a public orna- 
ment. 

But St. Louis is something besides the focal point of 
57,000 miles of railways. She is the chief port in 18,000 
miles of inland waterways. She is superior to the nick- 
name she often gets as the mere " capital of the Missis- 
sippi Valley," but her leading men have never been blind 
to the value of that mightiest of American waterways 
as a medium for the transportation of non-perishable 
and coarse freights, and as a guarantor of moderate 
freight rates. The Merchants' Exchange of St. Louis 
has for twenty years been pressing the Government to 
expend u]ion the improvement of this highway such 
sums as will render it navigable at a profit at all times. 
The Government has greatly bettered the condition of 
the river, but it will require a large expenditure and 
long-continued work to insure a fair depth all along the 
channel at low" w^ater. What is wanted is a ten -foot 
channel. Now it drops to five feet and a half, and even 
less where there are obstructions in the form of shoals 
and bars. It is argued that the improvement asked for 
would so reduce the cost of freighting on the river as to 
bi'ing to the residents of the valleys of the river and its 
tributaries a gain that would l)e greater than the cost 
of the work. In the language of a resolution ofl'ei'ed in 
Congress by Mr. Cruise, of Kansas, "it would reclaim 
an area of lands equal to some of the great States, and 
so improve the property of the people and increase their 
trade relations with other sections of the United States, 
and improve the condition of our foreign trade, as to 

402 



benefit every interest and every part of tlie wliole 
conntry."'' 

Recently the Exchange and the city government, 
with the leading industrial bodies of the city, sent a me- 
morial to Congress which they called " a plea in favor 
of isolating the ^Mississippi River, and making it the 
subject of an annual appropriation of )j^S,0(»o,000 until it 
shall be permanentl}" improved for safe and useful navi- 
gation." They said that the removal of a snag or rock 
anywhere between Cairo and New Orleans extends re- 
lief to Pittsburg, Little Hock, Nashville, and Kansas 
City. This is because the stream runs past and through 
ten States, and (with its tributaries) waters and drains, 
wholly or in part, more than one-half the States and 
Territories of the Union. 

After proving that 2S,(»00,000 persons inhaljit the re- 
gion directly interested in the improvement of the river, 
the memorialists proceed to show that the railroads in 
1890 carried freight at .941 cents per ton per mile, and 
that this amounted to $11 29 for 1200 miles, the dis- 
tance between Boston or New Orleans and St. Louis, 
whereas the river rate for that distance was $2 20 a ton. 
They show that whereas it cost 42^ cents to send a 
bushel of wheat by rail from CUiicago to Ne^v York in 
1SG8, the rate had decreased in 1891 to .941 of a cent. 
This saving to the people was not brought about solely 
by competition among the railroads; the com])etition of 
the water lines with the railroads also influenced the re- 
duction. Upon the basis of an estimate that fifty mill- 
ions of dollars must be spent upon the river, they offer 
other reasons for believing that the money will be well 
spent. They assert that before tlie jetties deepened the 
mouth of the river, only half a million bushels of wheat 
were annually exportetl to Europe from New Orleans. 
Now eighteen millions of bushels are shipped thus, and 

40:3 



the amount is increasing. Had that wheat not gone by 
that route at the rate of 14^ cents a bushel from St. 
Louis to J>iver])ool, it mnst have been sent b}^ rail to 
New York at 21-^ cents a bushel — a difference of seven 
cents a bushel in favor of the river route, or a saving of 
$l,2ri0,000 on tlie annual shipment of wheat alone. The 
census figures of 1890 show that the amount of freight 
carried oil the river and its tributaries in 1889 was 31,- 
000,000 tons. It is impossible to here follow the argu- 
ments and pleas that are embodied in tlie memorial, but 
it is well to know that they are not the outcome of the 
interests and ambition of St. Louis alone, but of the en- 
tire region which makes use of the now erratic, destruc- 
tive, and uncertain river. "What St. Louis asks is what 
New Orleans wants, and this is what Memphis, Yicks- 
burg, Cairo, and the masses of the peo})le in several 
large and populous States believe should be granted for 
their relief and gain. 

The demand of the people of all this great region is 
that the river, from the Falls of St. Anthony to the jet- 
ties, be permanently improved under the direction of 
the Secretary of War and the chief engineers of the 
army ; that §8,000,000 be appropriated for said improve- 
ment, and that a similar sum be annuall}'' expended un- 
der the direction of the Secretary of War until the river 
is permanently improved for safe and useful navigation. 

The coal supply, which has had so much to do with 
the development of the new St. Louis as a manufactur- 
ing centre, comes from Illinois, tlie bulk of it being ob- 
tained witliin from ten to twenty miles of the city. St. 
Louis is itself built over a coal bed, and the fuel was 
once mined in Forest Park, though not profitalily. The 
Illinois soft coal is found to be the most economical for 
making steam. It is sold in the city for from 1^1 15 to 
$1 50 a ton. The Merchants' Exchange has it hauled 

404 



to its furnaces m wagons for $1 50 a ton, but Mr. Mor- 
gan, the secretary — to whom I am greatly indebted for 
many facts respecting the commerce of the city — says 
that those manufacturers who buy the same coal by the 
car-load get it cheaper. All southern Illinois, across the 
Mississippi, is covered with coal. Fifty or sixty miles 
farther south in that State a higher grade of bituminous 
coal is found, and marketed in St. Louis for household 
use. It is cleaner and burns with less waste, but it costs 
between 25 and 30 per cent. more. 

The Exposition and Music Hall Building was the sub- 
ject of what was perhaps the first great ex[)ression of 
the renewed youth of the city. It is a monument to 
the St. Louis of to-day. It is said to be the largest 
structure used for "exposition" purposes in this coun- 
try since the Centennial World's Fair at Philadelphia. 
It is 50G feet long, 332 feet wide, and encloses 280,000 
feet of space. The history of its construction is one of 
those stories of popular co-operation and swift execution 
of which St. Louis seems likely to offer the world a vol- 
ume. A fund of three-quarters of a million was raised 
by popular subscription ai)out ten years ago, and the 
building was finished within twelve months of the birth 
of the i)roject. It is built of brick, stone, and terra- 
cotta, has a main hall so large that a national jiolitical 
convention took up only one nave in it, contains the 
largest music hall in the country, with a seating capaci- 
ty for 4000 persons, and a smaller entertainment hall to 
accommodate 1500 persons. The famous pageants and 
illuminations which mark the carnival in that city are 
coincident with the opening of the exhibitions. Six of 
these fairs have been held in this buihUng, eacli contin- 
uing forty days, and showing the manufactured ])rod- 
ucts of the whole country, Init ])rincipally of the ]VIissis- 
sippi Valley. The merchants and manufacturers of St. 

405 



Louis naturally make a very ifuportant contribution to 
the (lisj)lay. 

I say "naturall\%" because this Ijusy capital of the cen- 
tre of the country, and of its main internal water sys- 
tem, has an imposing position as one of the greatest 
workshops and trading-points of the nation. In the 
making of boots and shoes no Western city outstrips St. 
Louis, and her jobbing trade in these lines is enormous, 
and rapidly increasing. Boston, the shoe -distributing- 
centre of the country, sent 310,500 cases of goods to St. 
Louis in 1801, as against 288,000 to Chicago, and 284,000 
to Xew York. The gain in the manufactured product 
of St. Louis was 17 per cent, in 1801, and in tiie job- 
bing trade it was more than -10 per cent. The Shoe and 
Leather Gcizette of that city makes the confident predic- 
tion that, "at this rate of progress, in five years St. 
Louis will lead the world in the number of shoes manu- 
factured and in the aggregate distribution of the same." 

She has an enormous fiour- milling interest, having 
sold in 1801 no less than -1,002,405 barrels of flour. Iler 
14 mills in the city have a capacity of 11,850 barrels a 
day, and her 16 mills close around the city, and run by 
St. Louis men and capital, grind 0850 barrels a day. 
The city turned out 1,148,100 barrels, and the suburbs 
1,542,416 barrels, in 1801. In the neck-and-neck race in 
flour-milling between St. Louis and Milwaukee, St. Louis 
has recently suffered through the loss of a large mill by 
fire. The figures for the two cities were, St. Louis, 
1,748,100 barrels; Milwaukee, 1,827,284 barrels. It is 
seen that our reciprocal treaties with the Central and 
South American countries and the islands off our coast 
will open up a large and lucrative trade in flour, as 
well as in many other commodities. While I was pre- 
paring this chapter, in 1802, a large shipment of flour 
had been made to Cuba, where the duty on that staple 

406 



Lad been reduced from nearly five dollars to one dollar 
a barrel. The city exported ;34tl:,r)()0 barrels to Europe, 
and sold more than two millions of barrels to supply 
the Southern States. 

Cotton is received in St. Louis from ]\[issouri, Okla- 
homa, Kansas, Arkansas, Texas, and Indian Territory. 
It seeks that way to the East, and as much passes on as 
is stopped in St. Louis. It is used to a slight extent in« 
manufactures there. A wooden-ware company in the 
city sells fully one-half of all that ware that is marketed 
in the country, and manufactures, or controls the manu- 
facture, in many places. The largest hardware company 
in the country which does not make, but carries on a 
jobbing trade in those goods, is a St. Louis institution. 
The saddlery and harness makers do a business of three 
millions ; the clothing-makers have a trade of six mill- 
ions ; the new and growing trade in the manufacture of 
electrical supplies reached a value of five millions last 
year ; four millions in wagons and carriages was an item 
of the city's manufactures ; the making of lumber, box- 
es, sashes, doors, and blinds amounted to live millions ; 
of paints, to three millions, and of ])riuting, publishing, 
and the periodical press, to eight and a quarter millions. 
The businesses of the manufacture of iron and iron sup- 
plies, brass goods, and drugs and chemicals are all very 
large. 

Within ten years the furniture - making industry 
has doubled, and there are now about sixty furniture 
factories, employing four thousand men, and making 
$5,500,000 worth of goods. The territory of distribu- 
tion includes Mexico and the Central iVmerican States. 
The fact that the city is a great hard - wood lumber 
market, coupled with her chea}) coal, accounts for 
this growth. 

The cattle business is another line in which St. Louis, 

407 



among the larger cattle depots, made a unique progress. 
She handled more than three-(iuarters of a million of 
cattle, nearly half a million of sheep, 1,380,000 hogs, and 
55,975 horses and mules. The only falling oflf was in 
the horse and mule trade, and that was due to the su- 
premacy of electric and cable power over horse-power 
on street railroads. St. Louis is still the great mule 
market of the country. 

The city caters to human weakness by an enormous 
output of beer and tobacco. Of each of these luxuries 
she makes fourteen miUions of dollars' worth annually. 
Here is the largest lager-beer brewery in the country, if 
not in the world, and the city is third in the list of brew- 
ino- towns. The business excited the interest of English 
capital, and a syndicate bought up a great number of 
the breweries, but the two largest remain the property 
of the original companies. Twenty millions of dollars 
are invested in this trade, which is caj-ried from St. Louis 
into every State, into Canada and Mexico, and even into 
Austi-alia and Europe. 

St. Louis is our biggest market for manufactured to- 
bacco. Thus the principal depots of the trade compare 
with one another : 

Total sales of chewing and smoking tobacco in the United ouucs. 

States r. .' 243,505,848 

St. Louis 52,214,862 

Fifth New Jersey District 22,000,000 

(Mncinnati 21,000,000 

Petersburg, Virginia 18,000,000 

Of plug tobacco, 44:,503,O0S pounds were taxed as the 
city's product in 1891 ; of smoking tobacco, about 5,682,- 
000 pounds; and of fine -cut chewing tobacco, 31-1,702 
pounds. The cigars made there numbered fifty -three 
and a quarter millions. 

St. Louis had twenty-three national and State banks 

408 



and four trust companies in 1S92, with a joint bank- 
ing capital of $29,661,075. The city of St. Louis is 
one of the two second - class national banking deposi- 
tories, Xew York being the other, and Washington 
(the United States Treasur}^) being tlie one of the lirst- 
class. 

It is a comfortable and a dignified city, with everv 
sign of wealth in its commercial and residence districts, 
and with a shopping district whose windows form a 
perpetual world's fair. 

The knowledge of the value of tasteful and attractive 
shop- window displays always accompanies push and 
prosperity in a city, and in this respect none in America 
excels tins one. Yet it offers a chance to compare mod- 
ern customs in this respect with the shabby inert wa3^s 
of the traders of the past. 

To see the contrast it is only necessar}^ to leave the 
centre of Broadway and walk to where that street 
passes the French Market. Here is the cramped, care- 
less untidiness of half a century ago ; but the place 
has a distinct interest for a New Yorker, because it is 
his Eighth Ward transplanted. The same low brick 
houses, the same dormer-windows, the same cheap 
signs, and the stalls and stands and tiny shops that 
are found near Spring Street market are all re- 
peated. 

But it is easy to change one's point of view of the 
city, and declare it to be one of the most open, clean, 
and clear of settlements. This can be accomplished by 
going out to Grand Avenue and beyond, and riding 
through the dwelling districts. There one sees broad 
tree- lined sti'eets, costly houses, and many beautiful, 
semi -private, courtlike streets that are the seats of 
pretty homes. In this neighborhood are the parks 
which are the crow^n and glory of the city. Some, like 

401) 



Forest Park, boast nature's beauties merely tidied and 
treasured up ; but others show tlie blending of human 
taste with natural greener}^ and blossom adorned by 
statuary and fountains. But St. Louis is rich otherwise 
in those possessions which have elsewhere been described 
— her fine theatres, her clubs and churches, her great 
fire-proof hotel, her schools, and her old and cultivated 
society. 

The levee along the river-side is worth a visit. It is 
diametrically different in itself and its atmosphere from 
the city that lies back of it, and that seems so familiar 
to a New-Yorker. It is a wide and imposing incline of 
stone paving, perhaps 250 feet broad. It is not West- 
ern ; it is Southern. Hides, wool, cotton, and tobacco 
are heaped about on the wharf-boats, which seem to 
cling to the levee with gangways that are like the an- 
tennae of an insect. There is a line of huge old-time 
river packets, looking as open and frail as bird-cages, 
but with towering black funnels from which jet smoke 
curls lazily up. Be3"ond is the turgid, hurrying river. 
The street along the top of the levee is a single line of 
warehouses and shops. The latter recall those of our 
own water-side in New York. In place of our bronzed 
and bearded salt-water men, here are shiftless white la- 
borers and negro roustabouts. But the same petty traders 
are among them, keeping drinking-places and stands for 
the sale of brass watches and rings, dirks, brass-knuckles, 
pistols, cartridges. Cheap gin, cheaper clothing, and still 
cheaper jewelry are the prime articles all along the thor- 
oughfare, precisely as in New York or Liverpool or 
Havre. 

The water supply of the city is drawn from the Mis- 
sissippi, as IS the case in New Orleans, and the cities 
between there and St. Louis. It is mud-colored, and 
seems thick and soupy, whether it is or no. I was as- 

410 



sured that it was second in high sanitary qualities to the 
]Srile water, which is still muddier. 

It used to be said that the sum of the collective am- 
bition of St. Louis was represented by a pretty woman 
with jewels in her ears and mounted on a thoroughl)red 
horse. AVomen, horses, and diamonds, in other words, 
were the things dearest to its heart in the by-gone days. 
I do not know whether this taste has changed with the 
inrush of new inhabitants. They certainly have the fine 
horses in plenty, and St. Louis is likely long to maintain 
her fame as a seat of womanly beauty. Having observed 
several very large and splendid jeweller's shops that are 
a notable feature of the showy business streets, I went 
into one of the finest and inquired of the manager 
whether the city still is true to its old love, the dia- 
mond. Behold his answer: 

" There is no one of moderate means in St. Louis who 
does not own and wear diamonds," said he ; " however, 
they are not Avorn as large as formerl}^ Two and a half 
carats is the size of the largest stones now worn by men 
or women. The ladies who possess ear-rings still wear 
them, but few are now bought. There is no nonsensical 
law, such as obtains in London and Paris, making it bad 
form to wear diamonds in the daytime. Those who have 
them wear them when they please." 

The Chief of Police, Mr. Lawrence Harrigan, assured 
me that there is no fixed gaming-place in St. Louis — not 
one regular " game," even of poker. The people did not 
want it, and the police did not want it, so it was stoi)ped, 
he said. The men play at their homes, in clubs, and in 
the hotels, but I saw no sign of any indulgence in cards 
anywhere in this which was once the greatest gambling- 
town, next to New Orleans, in the country 

I do not mean to say that the city is a moral one, for 
its people are distinctly human, and the imperfections of 

411 



their lives are apparent and, in some respects, lively. 
The theatres are open seven nights in the w^eek, and, 
w^hile Friday is the play-going night for the fashionables, 
Snnday is the night for the people. 

They have an American Sunday in St. Louis. It is 
the same as what we in the North call a European Sun- 
day. But it becomes apparent to whoever travels far 
in the United States that the only Sunday which de- 
serves a distinct title is that of England, IS'ew England, 
and the Atlantic coast. The Sunday of Chicago, San 
Francisco, Cincinnati, New Orleans,, St. Louis, and most 
of the larger cities of the major ]mrt of our land is Eu- 
ropean, if you please ; but it is also American. In St. 
Louis the theatres, groggeries, dives, " melodeons," ci- 
gar stores, candy stores, and refreshment places of every 
kind are all kept wide open. The street cars carry on 
their heaviest trade, and the streets are crowded then 
as on no other day of the week. On the other days the 
city keeps up, in great part, the measure of its old river- 
side hospitality, a survival of the merry era of the steam- 
boats. The numerous night resorts — the variety and 
music halls, the dance -houses and the beer-gardens, 
blaze out with a prominence nothing gets by day. 

To conclude, in the language of the editor of one of 
the several thoroughly equipped newspapers of the city : 
" St. Louis prefers to do business according to safe and 
creditable doctrines, and to win success by honestly de- 
serving it. Her experience has vindicated her policy. 
She has never taken a step backward. She does her 
business with her own money. She has niulti])lied her 
mercantile and manufacturing establishments, her blocks 
of magnificent buildings, and her facilities of trade in 
every direction out of her legitimate profits. As she has 
been in the past, so she will be in the future — the coun- 
try's best example of a truly thrifty city." 



ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF TRAVEL 
AND DESCRIPTION 



FROM THE BLACK SEA THROUGH PERSIA AND INDIA. Written and 
Illustraicd by Edwin Loud "Weeks. Svo, Cloth, Oriiameutal, 
Uncut EtigL's and Gill Top. {About Reiulij.) 

NOTES IN JAPAN. Written and Illustrated by Alfred Parsons. 
Crown 8vo, Cloth, Oriiameutal, Uucut Edges and Gilt Top. [About 
Ready.) 

THE WARWICKSHIRE AVON. Notes by A. T. Quiller-Couch. Il- 
lustrations by Alfred Parsons. Crown 8vo, Ornamental, 
Half Leatiier, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $2 00. {In n Box.) 

PONY TRACKS. Written and Illustrated by Frederic Remington. 
8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $3 00. 

A SPORTING PILGRIMAGE. Studies in English Sport, Past and Pres- 
ent. By Caspar W. Whitney. Copiously Illustrated. Svo, 
Cloth, Ornamental, .$3 50. 

LONDON. By Walter Besant. With 130 Illustrations. Crown 
Svo, Clotli, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $3 00. 

THE PRAISE OF PARIS. By Theodore Child. Profusely Illustrated. 
Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, §3 50. 

THE DANUBE, from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. By F. D. 
Millet. Illustrated by the Author and Alfred Parsons. 
Ci«wn Svo, Cloth, Orutimental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $2 50. 

RIDERS OF MANY LANDS. By Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Brevet 
Lieutenant-colonel U. S. A. Ulusti'ated by Frederic Remington, 
and from Photographs. Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uucut Edges 
and Gilt Top, $4 00. 

ITALIAN GARDENS. By Charles A. Platt. Illustrated. 4to, Cloth, 
Ornamental, Uucut Edges and Gilt Top, $5 00. {In a Box.) 

SKETCHING RAMBLES IN HOLLAND. By George H. Boughton, 
A.R.A. Illustrated by the Author and Edwin A. Abbey. Svo, 
Cloth, Illuminated, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, |5 00. 

ABOUT PARIS. By Richard PIarding Davis. Illustrated. Post Svo, 
Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. 

OUR ENGLISH COUSINS. By Richard Harding Davis. Illustrated. 
Post Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 25. 

THE RULERS OF THE MEDI TEHRAN E AN. By Richard Harding Davis. 

Illustrated. Post Svo, Clotli, Ornamental, $1 25. 
THE WEST FROM A CAR-WINDOW. By Richard Harding Davis. Il- 
lustrated. Post Svu, Cloth, Ornamental, |1 25. 



CATHEDRALS AND ABBEYS IN GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. With 

Descriptive Letter-press by the Rev. Kiciiakd Wiieati.ey, D.D. 

llhistrated. Folio, Illuminated Cloth, .flO 00. {In a Box.) 
MEN TONE, CAIRO, AND CORFU. By Constance Fenimoke VVoolson. 

Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental. {About Ready.) 
THE BORDERLAND OF CZAR AND KAISER. By Poultney Bigelow. 

Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, |2 00. 
A HOUSE- HUNTER IN EUROPE. By William Henry Bishop. With 

Plans and an Illustration. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, $1 50. 
LITERARY LANDMARKS OF LONDON. By Laurence IIutton. With 

Many Portraits. Post Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, %l 75. 

LITERARY LANDMARKS OF EDINBURGH. By Laurence Hutton. Il- 
lustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, Ornamental, |1 00. 

LITERARY LANDMARKS OF JERUSALEM. By Laurence Hutton. Il- 
lustrated. Post Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, 75 cents. 
OUR ITALY. (Southern California.) By Charles Dudley Warner. 

Illustrated. Square Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and 
Gilt Top, 12 50. 

THEIR PILGRIMAGE By Charles Dudley Warner. Illustrated. 
Post Svo, Halt Leather, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, 

$2 00. 

ON CANADA'S FRONTIER. Sketches of History, Sport, and Advent- 
ure; and of the Indians, Missionaries, Fur - traders, and Newer 
Settlers of Western Canada. By Julian Ralph. Illustrated. 
Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, 12 50. 

OUR GREAT WEST. A Study of the Present Conditions and Future 
Possibilities of the New Commonwealths and Capitals of the 
United States. By Julian Ralph. Illustrated. Svo, Cloth, 
Ornamental, $3 50. 

THE ARMIES OF TO-DAY. By Brigadier- general Wesley Merritt, 
U.S.A., Viscount Wolseley, and Others. Profusely Illustrated. 
Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, Uncut Edges and Gilt Top. P 50. 

SPANISH-AMERICAN REPUBLICS. By Theodore Child. Profusely 
Illustrated by T. de Thulstrup, Frederic Remington, and 

Others. Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, p 50. 

WINTERS IN ALGERIA. Written and Illustrated by Fredehick Ar- 
thur Bridgman. Squaie Svo, Cloth, Ornamental, $2 50. 

THE TSAR AND HIS PEOPLE. By 1'heodore Child. Svo, Cloth, 
Ornanienlal. Uncut Edges and Gilt Top, $3 00. 



• MSHED BY IIAPtPER & BROTHERS, New York 

Thf above tvorks are for sale by all booksellers, or will be mailed by the 
publishers, postcuje prepaid, on receipt of the price. 



